digital-post

हमारी बेड़िया

noreply@blogger.com (Lalit Chowdhary) — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 10:34:31 PST

छत्तरपुर के अर्ध्य कत्यानी मंदिर के द्वार पर जो एक बरगद का पेड़ है |

इस पेड़ को हमने कई लाल धागों की बेड़ियों से बाँध रखा है |

हर धागे में अनेक-ओ-अनेक गांठे है, वो हमारी कुंठाये ही तो है |

आने वाली ग्यारस पर जब मैं वहा जाऊँगा, तुम भी मेरे साथ चुपके से आ जाना |

धीरे-धीरे सब गांठे हम खोल देंगे, बरगद को फिर अपने हाल पर छोड़ देंगे |

सूपर मून

noreply@blogger.com (Lalit Chowdhary) — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 08:17:28 PDT

ऐ चाँद, आज जो तुम्हे पास से देखा तो दाग़ कुछ बड़े से लगे

बीस साल बाद भी प्रगति की लहर से बेखबर से लगे

बिना मेक-उप के निकल पड़े हो, तुम मगरुर से लगे

नानी-दादी की कहानियों में जो भोला सा तुम्हारा चेहरा था,

जापान-लीबिया की त्रासदी से अब बेनक़ाब हो चुका था

तुम जब दूर थे तो किसी बिछडे प्रेमी की तरह सताते थे

पास आने लगे तो अपना गुलशन बचाने पर मजबूर हुएं हम

एक नजदीक के रिश्ते से डरने लगे हें हम

Seven Emotions worth Sharing

noreply@blogger.com (Lalit Chowdhary) — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 05:22:14 PST

Knamaste ~ that which is Greed in me greets that which is Greed in you.

We humans have this deep seated desire to give and receive greetings. It is unclear if this tradition has traversed evolutionary branch or follows instructions of Gods. Technological changes in our lifetime have had big impact on how we are consuming greetings. The broadcast media allowed our leaders and newsreaders to greet us everyday. However with the incoming-call free it was possible to receive greetings of our loved ones and call-center agents. You will agree that Internet has truly transformed the way we exchange greetings. Via social networking and online media, potential to greet and touch the hearts of millions in a viral sort of way is within everyone’s reach. In this episode of blog-post we will look at most common causes of greetings and the underlying emotion.

Patronizing - Country before self. We are just one insignificant drop in the ocean; we yield only 1 / 650,000,000 voting authority in forming an unstable government. Yet there is a strong bond that ties us together. Our nation! Internet makes it possible to patronize every patriotic salutation. Without having to leave the comfort of our air-conditioned offices we bow to our soldiers, we epitomize our leaders, we sing praises of our scientists’ achievements, we bask in our past glory and we raise an eyebrow on Lal Chowk flag hoisting. I bow to the person who summarized patriotism in a crisp and short 104 pages of slides. You will never regret wasting time reading this. Sharing this presentation with others is equivalent to one year of rigorous NCC training.

India

View more presentations from Lalit Chowdhary.

Hope – yes we can do it. It is natural to have a feeling of depression and low self-esteem after reading inspirational verses of patriotism. The self-realization of sedentary lifestyle will stare back you. You have not done anything for country worth writing home about. I know just what you need; take a mood-swing at this emotion with this uplifting international and personalized presentation.

Attitude

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Enlightenment - I can see the positive energy is building up. You have come this far but let us be candid. We have not yet narrowed down on the purpose of life. Always operating from the logic, written down objectives, measurable scorecards, take a break from all this. Let us practice listening to our hearts. No miracle will happen in our life unless we believe in miracles happening in other people’s lives.

Daring To Live On The Edge

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Awakening – the science of metaphysics. Your father did not spend all his life’s savings to teach you Astanga Yoga or Bhagwat Gita and your modern education makes it extremely hard to adopt the Vedic culture. It is never too late, I can see that your mind is ripe to receive. O Parth! Raise your weapon or simply flip through the technical presentation below.

Stress Management

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Guilt – I wasted my life. At this stage most of the folks are ready to take it to woods. My friends tell me this is mid-life crisis. I think it is bit more deep-seated like the burden of past karma. Buddha recognized this early in life and left his family behind. We suggest you burn your past bad karma through an inclusive growth strategy as suggested below.

Madness

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Love – song of birds. Love is a feeling that you get when all other feelings have been satisfied. My suggestion is that you complete your assigned work before falling in love or applying for 2 weeks vacation.

The Song Of The Birds

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We have come to the final emotion. We have learned many things. Our home is our temple. Let there be Faith.

This post would not have been possible without the contribution from people who believe in community sharing. They presumed that our souls are tortured and worse that it can be healed through power point presentation. For their sake I hope it does make a difference in your life!

The Mysterious Staircase

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Obituary: Web 2.0

noreply@blogger.com (Lalit Chowdhary) — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 04:04:08 PST

Everyone loves sensational news. Declare this or that as dead and the readers come in hordes to pay their last visit. In sensational journalism, my goal is to reach a level where I would declare anything or everything dead on arrival. My ploy is to ‘earn respect’ (read fear) in the minds of brand owners and marketing folks. They should dread to see their brand featured on my website. It is in this modest endeavor today I started my research on the mighty Yahoo! There was no panic on the street when someone from the respected Wired declared as “the web” dead. I followed through on this story. Along the way stuff like “delicious” made it to the epitaph bookmark! My extra smart analytical engine sensed vulnerability in Yahoo’s Castle and to build my story I called a friend who covers Microsoft.

On the condition of complete anonymity my source was willing to give me spoof on Google. He said people are not interested in knowing if Yahoo is dead, they are only waiting for biopsy report! I was a bit disappointed in arriving so late on the crime scene. The spoof on Google was encouraging; I learned that Microsoft was clandestinely working on a project which will put Google in its algorithmically defined place. “Perhaps an api_call to find stuff while people spend time on their favorite MSN websites”, I suggested, “Bingo!” he said. You will have to keep that one off the record, he suggested!

What about Microsoft? Shit, they surprised the market with this Kinect thingy and people are not complaining about Windows7 anymore. Hmmm what about cloud computing. Everyone seems to riding on the Cloud Hype, can I declare that as dead create fears in the minds of investors. Well I don’t have enough data on the Cloud. Let me not confuse my audience and stick to the story on Google. Everyone knows that the Wave is dead; corollary to this can we assume HTML5 is dead? Someone on HTML5 speculated that Google will eventually give-up Flash support in favour of its VP8 video codes. What would that mean for Adobe? If VP8 fails to gain ground what would that do to Chrome?

The collaborative spirit of Web 2.0 seems to be lost. The RSS feeds from Facebook or Twitter are not openly available on Feedburner. The pictures from Picassa cannot be easily shared on the Facebook. The popular platforms control the conversations on the web, open API’s are its business transactions. In the cruel world of business, Web 2.0 is dead. I am placing all my bets on Zynga, for churning out pure unconditional addictive entertainment.

What are your views, where do you think we are heading?

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this blog are not of the author. The companies listed must consider hiring the author to get to the bottom of this!

Memorable Hindi Film Songs of 2010

noreply@blogger.com (Lalit Chowdhary) — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 09:38:56 PST

Now that New Year dhin-chak noise has settle down it is time reflect on the best melodies of 2010. There was noteworthy Rehman experimental music of “Raavan” and “Robot”. You will agree that in 2010 Rehman's music had little impact on box office and CWG performance, but no disrespect to his evergreen creativity. We relived the oldies style mushy-mushy love songs of “Veer” by Sajid-Wajid. The heavy promotion of the movie and costume drama visuals did not work for me as against loud and colorful Pritam in "Action Replayy"! Surprisingly some of the best songs have come from the box office average/flop movies of 2010. My pick of top 2010 Hindi songs are as listed below –

1. Song Name: Dil To Bachcha Hai

Film/Album: Ishqiya

Singer(s): Rahat Fateh Ali Khan

Music Director: Vishal Bhardwaj

Lyricist: Gulzar

Gulzar sahib undoes the damage of Ravan in Ishqiya. Rahat Fateh Ali Khan has voice that can heal many a broken souls and blur the Radcliffe line! The background score by Vishal has child like simplicity, a very catchy tune.

2. Song Name: Tujhe Bhula Diya

Film/Album: Anjaana Anjaani

Singer(s): Mohit Chauhan, Shekhar Ravjiani, Shruti Pathak

Music Director: Vishal - Shekhar

Lyricist: Kumaar, Vishal Dadlani

Shruti Pathak of “marjawaan” fame comes back with yet another beauty. Hope we get to hear her more in 2011. The song is infectious, I know of many a love birds that break-up in the evening to enjoy this heart-rending rendition in the evening and patch up in the morning, just for the heck of it!

3. Song Name: Ajab Leher

Film/Album: Break Ke Baad

Singer(s): Neeraj Shridhar, Shekhar Ravjiani, Vishal Dadlani

Music Director: Vishal - Shekhar

Lyricist: Prasoon Joshi

Prasoon Joshi has hand-crafted every song of “Break Ke Baad” with care and passion. They should have done a musical instead of romantic dramedy just for the songs. Enjoyed all the songs in this album, Ajab Lehar is very peppy forces you to pay attention to lyrics. When it comes to figures-of-speech it is difficult to pick Prasoon from Gulzar, both have excellent range of imagination.

4. Song Name: Jaane Ye Kya Hua

Film/Album: Karthik Calling Karthik

Singer(s): K K

Music Director: Shankar, Ehsaan & Loy

Lyricist: Javed Akhtar

Javed sahib is perhaps most consistent song writer of our age. I see him nominated every year. Javed sahib may not get a Filmfare for this song but there is no other explanation for rising office romance. KK has an effortless range; Farhan did the right thing by choosing not to lend his own voice, sound advice by SEL.

5. Song Name: Udi

Film/Album: Guzaarish

Singer(s): Sunidhi Chauhan, Shail Hada

Music Director: Sanjay Leela Bhansali

Lyricist: A.M. Turaz

SLB is not a regular music director neither is Turaz a regular song writer. So what, I protest. This song does cinematic magic all thanks to choreography of Mr. Longines Fernandes (of Jai Ho fame!) Also don't forget that this song is the only relief to the tortured audiences who ended up in theater to watch the movie. Ash performs Spanish Flamenco with just as much ease as she does desi beat “Chhan Ke Mohalla” in Action Replayy. Sunidhi Chauhan had a rocking 2010.

6. Song Name: Dil Kyun Yeh Mera

Film/Album: Kites

Singer(s): K K

Music Director: Rajesh Roshan

Lyricist: Nasir Faraaz

Rajesh Rohan sahib has proved once again that style has no age barrier. The haunting melodies popular in the seventies have a place even in today’s world. It is a simple to remember poem by Nasir. I was forced to pick KK one more time over Sonu Nigam. Some of you may pick “zindagi do pal ki” over my choice. No complains, same genre, same style go for the one you like. The song has no connection with the movie, which is good for the music industry.

7. Song Name: Bekarar

Film/Album: Paathshaala

Singer(s): Lucky Ali

Music Director: Hanif Sheikh

Lyricist: Hanif Sheikh

A debutant music director pours his heart out. We can only hope he does not go unnoticed. Lucky Ali gives all he has got in this sentimental piece. The song wants to break free from the pseudo Paathshaala and I liked the musical revolt!

I am sure you don't agree with my list, go ahead complain in the comments section. There is room for 3 more songs if you like constructive criticism :)

तीन वरदान

noreply@blogger.com (Lalit Chowdhary) — Wed, 29 Dec 2010 12:14:39 PST

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My first attempt to create an audio blog. The option to embed mp3 didn't quite work out as expected so switched to Youtube with a static picture.

Principal Ma’am

noreply@blogger.com (Lalit Chowdhary) — Sun, 19 Dec 2010 10:02:10 PST

My wife has asked me to do something useful this weekend. On her request, I dedicate this short post to Mrs. Chanchal Chawla, who is Principal of Primary Government School in Suncity, Sector 54, Gurgaon. Mrs. Chawla started her journey in 2003 to run schools for under privileged children. HUDA provided the building but that is only the starting point. Finding volunteers’ to teach, persuading parents’ to send the children to school and creating a healthy learning environment in the school is what differentiates Mrs. Chawla's efforts. Thankfully there are many volunteers who have come forward to help her in this fulfilling experience. Today hundreds of children from nearby villages, shanties and makeshift homes of construction labors come to this school.

Many times the children don’t come to school regularly. Their parents wouldn’t mind an extra helping hand at home. This has hardened her resolve to make the school a fun place. The school provides uniform, mid-day meals, books and play time for children. Mrs. Chawla can be strict as well, when it comes to ensuring children have good attendance. There have been many instances where she would go to the homes of the children and with some persuasion and some push get them to attend the school. If you live in the millennium city and would like to contribute in this noble endeavor, the school will accept your services. Part time teaching, donating or contributing funds for school books, toys, fees for teachers, school bags, stationary, list is long but every drop counts.

You may check out Rashmi Singh’s blog which is much better written and also has a video of the school.

Indivine is promoting Akhsaya Patra for mid-day meal program, hope this will help the cause.

Operation Empire Strikes Back

noreply@blogger.com (Lalit Chowdhary) — Sat, 11 Dec 2010 10:34:55 PST

Acropolis Corporation has called in for an extra ordinary general body meeting to discuss the potential threat from Wikileaks. Acropolis corporation controls 80% of market share of Ping Pong balls and has systematically managed its connection with government to block entry of any worthy competition. It has also manipulated for last 40 years the import duty on Ping Pong balls which has anguished many a global players to enter local market. The independent experts, who monitor this industry and advices the government, are in fact paid employees of Acropolis. The Chairman has learned that some Pathetic Loser employee has uploaded incriminating stories on the Wikileaks which may go public anytime soon. The board members are not fully aware of impending threat and are joining the EGM without much fanfare. The security at the Acropolis has been on high alert; the members are required to deposit their laptops and mobile phones. This is quite unusual. The CIO is red-faced as the security wouldn't even allow him to carry a pen-drive which holds today’s presentation.

Navin joined Acropolis as a trainee and thanks to his family’s ministerial connection he was the youngest person to be inducted into the Acropolis’ distinguished board. Navin is not sure of his role as a board member, but it is comforting for him to know that most of the other ~~family~~ board members of Acropolis were exactly in the same position. There are a few investors from insurance and banking who attend these board meetings mostly to collect their gifts from the company. This EGM is unusual in more than one ways, board members have not been provided with the usual brief. A board member without a brief is like a minister without a speech. Navin wonders his way to the boardroom and couldn’t help notice all the awards and trophies collected by Acropolis over the years. The meeting is about to start and Navin takes his delegated place in the room.

The Chairman makes an opening statement, “We are under attack from within. One of our disgruntled employees has leaked many of company’s documents to an Internet website called Wikileaks. We are not sure who this person is and we are not sure what all has been leaked. It is a cause of grave concern that your company will see erosion of shareholder value which has taken years of hard work to build. We owe this responsibility to ourselves, our employees and our shareholders that our interests are protected. I seek one suggestion from each one of you and five minutes to present it to the board members. Each board member will then vote for any 3 suggestions. Top 3 voted suggestions will be implemented by the IT Team at a highest priority. Let us put our heads together and start generating solutions.”

Navin is an ardent social networking addict and devours everything that the free Internet has to offer. He has read about Wikileaks and considers it as some kind of a Monopoly Game. Navin raises his hand and seeks permission to speak, which he is granted. “Sir Mr. Chairman, social media is riding on free and unregulated medium, which has its own rules. We cannot fight it by age old voting procedures akin to reality TV shows. Some of the members may suggest that we should approach Courts to block Wikileaks from publishing; I suggest we say Tata to such suggestions. Witch-hunting may also be high on the agenda in the minds of many, if that would work, James Bond would have got Wikileaks shutdown! Wikileaks is a powerful “idea”, on Internet the websites may come or go but the ideas live forever. I have formulated certain strategies to combat high-value-ideas executed on a low-entry-barrier platform from gaining a position of dominance. If you allow me to present my case, I will outline these here.” Navin continues his monologues and for the benefit of readers these are published here.

1. Junk-in Junk-out: Wikileaks make no editorial judgment of content provided by its sources. Hypothetically speaking we can produce hordes of disgruntled employees by reaching out to ex-employees, retired employees, contract workers. We can force high volumes of deliberate leaks, most of which will be misleading and factually incorrect information. Since Wikileaks will have no way of validating its sources, they will publish everything or most of it. If we can prove 10% of published information to be factually incorrect, people will turn away from the core issue.

2. Riding the wave: When a website builds a certain critical mass it tries to get repeat visitors by creating waves. Website then rewards its contributors by letting them ride the wave. Just like blogging, Wikileaks has no monetary reward mechanism for its contributors. This loophole needs to be exploited. Social activists and journalists will be appointed to create an information collection network. We can even use a small seed fund for a Pyramid Marketing Scheme for rapid recruitment of agents. Our Network will promise to dole out huge sums of money for legitimate information collection. Our agents can choose to sell collected information back to the traditional media or Wikileaks or other agents higher in the pecking order. The payback mechanism (not to be confused with Operation Payback) will make espionage dependent on the very business it is trying to expose.

3. Power of Anonymous: The Internet makes it possible to keep the source Anonymous, which somehow makes the information more credible and sought after. There are factors like sympathy, fair share and level playing field which tilt the balance against large corporations. People often forget that they are cutting off the branch they are sitting on. The best approach to deal with these issues is to be sensitive to people’s need for consumption of high quality gossip from real anonymous sources. This can easily be developed by having an internal online anonymous grievance redress system. People can raise issues or suggest solutions to hot issues.

Just when Navin was done with his top three suggestions the CIO walked in with 20 printed copies of his presentations. The Chairman stood up and hugged Navin. Navin was appointed as the Chief Security Officer. The CIO looked puzzled and asked, “There is yet another org change?”

Heaven of Fiefdom

noreply@blogger.com (Lalit Chowdhary) — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 13:53:50 PDT

Where the mind is without hear and the head is held shy
When information is twisted
Where the bright bulbs have been broken up into filaments
By narrow political gains
Where words come out from the corrupt of slueths
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards corruption
Where the clear stream of treason has not lost its way
Into the daily assorted ads of newspapers
Where the mind is dumb founded by thee
Into ever-widening gap in thoughts and action
Into that heaven of fiefdom, my Father, let my country awake.

(Inspired by R N Tagore's Geetanjali verses)

Essential Elements of Mismanagement

noreply@blogger.com (Lalit Chowdhary) — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 09:38:13 PDT

Amazon has ~ 300,000 books on management and only 300 on mismanagement. This immediately raises a red flag. We see rampant mismanagement in our day to day lives and yet no one is teaching us this good stuff. As per Amazon best seller Essential Guide for Management, people who have read the book have a lasting impact. It helps them to be well organized in thoughts, actions and preaching. I have not read this specific book which qualifies me to speak freely on the merits of mismanagement. Management studies are loosely based on non-scientific subjects like social science, political science and economics. Why would anyone fall for these pseudo sciences, maybe for the same reason people fall for Homeopathy. Mismanagement, on the other hand, is well grounded on fundamental principles of Physics. Without getting into the details of three laws of motion, the purpose of nature was to create friction and cause opposite reactions. However it was the 2^nd Law of Thermodynamics which revealed the inner secret of the nature. This law basically states that, “it is impossible to convert heat completely into work.” If you want more simplistic view of this law, consider organized and disorganized. The effort to organize anything is lot more than to disorganize, for example effort to remove ink-stain, assembling broken china, organizing objects by color codes etc. “Things are going to get unimaginably worse, and they are never, ever going to get better again.” ~ Kurt Vonnegut

Skeptics would argue that it is possible to organize nature by creating isolated control systems. Our approach to solve problems by testing everything on a guinea pig before mass marketing gives us the power to control diseases and produce high yield crops. There are other examples of efficient airline systems, communication networks, etc. as landmark in creating order. I think progress we are making is missing the bigger picture. Not only do we have obsolescence of technology but also we have several macro level problems. Our energy sources are limited; there is an impending fresh water crisis, rapid extinction of several living species are all begging the question are we doing things right? I propose to answer these deep philosophical questions with utmost simplicity such that it can be understood by everyone regardless of their faith and brain-size.

It is not by accident that the Nature is disorganized; there are two underlying principles that make it so. First law of Nature states that Nature has no purpose. Nature is not following a pre-defined plan; there are no objectives, no sync up meetings, no status reports and no dashboards. Second law of Nature states that Nature is non-judgmental. The second law tells us that nature does not take sides, it does not hold grudges, it is not vindictive, it does not issue advisories or warnings etc… The scientists searching for laws of universe and philosophers searching for meaning of life must embrace these laws and proceeding accordingly.

This is right time to introduce the concepts of mismanagement and stitch it all together with the laws of nature. For simplicity we will consider three essential elements of mismanagement.

Authority: If we consider our current open market democratic society we have handful of elected ministers and board members exercising authority over billions of people. This method of exercising authority is no different than aristocracy or communism. No matter how we roll the dice we get the same results, a few people call the shots.

Equity: Effective management requires combination of kindness and justice towards people. This method when applied to business must be done so with a loophole called outsourcing. Outsourcing allows for passing the buck and creating sufficient room for mismanagement to develop.

Incentive: There should be sufficient incentive for people to take initiative and build strong society. However as things stand today every society denounces all materialistic incentives. This is sufficient to confuse the smart and deserving individuals.

Individuals with excessive greed and intimidation reach a position of authority making mockery of equitable system. Thus the cycle of mismanagement is completed.

Unofficial Guide to Commonwealth Games 2010 Delhi

noreply@blogger.com (Lalit Chowdhary) — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 22:52:48 PDT

Most of the folks in Indian Tourism Ministry were caught off guard when informed that Britain's national tourism agency has issued guidelines on the etiquette for foreign visitors who will be coming to London for the 2012 Summer Olympics. It is not that our tourism department has been twiddling their thumbs while the Sports Minister is hogging all the limelight in the national media. Managing a peaceful relay of Queen’s Baton across all the states is busy work. Now there is no time to write these guidelines considering that ministry needs at least 90 days to go through an open and fair tender process. By the virtue of being an active social media expert I am issuing Unofficial Guidelines for the Commonwealth Games visitors.

I take this opportunity to welcome you to Delhi for the Commonwealth Games! Let me first put all our visitors at comfort. We are pleased to inform you that all schools are shutdown, public & private functions have been deferred, beggars have been migrated and stray animals moved to safe places. In spite of all these efforts if you do see people assembled at a place, you are the most likely the reason for it. Unlike London we have no expectations on etiquettes front, we are flexible. We don’t play by the rule book instead we play with it. There are however a few cultural things that you must be aware of as you move around and mingle with people of India.

1. No hand signal: It is often a myth foreigner’s carry that in India everyone speaks fluent English. You see if that were to be true, Apple would consider outsourcing its Call Center to India. We don’t blame you though as we have our own misconceptions. We believe that every white person is from England, black from Kenya and brown from Japan. Please don’t be offended by our ignorance and there is no point in trying to explain the subtle differences between the British and the Australian. What is important to note is that when you ask for directions, watch the person responding closely, excessive use of hand gestures means that he is painting the directions on an imaginative canvas. Just remember this simple rule of engagement – no hands signal. Also remember that no two people will give you same directions, this is primarily an Indian thing. We believe that it is better to give a wrong direction than letting someone down by admitting that we don’t have the foggiest idea. I usually ask 15-20 people and use statistical techniques to reach a destination. I believe the problem of finding sports venues is going to be serious challenge for everyone since most of these are still under construction; many are yet to be named and updated on the Eicher Maps. I do hope they arrange buses for you folks. If you see the bus driver asking for directions, my suggestion is that you get down at Karol Bagh market, do some shopping and head home.

2. Bargaining: This maybe true in your country as well, if we get something at half the quoted price it is usually considered a good bargain. However for the ease of our foreign guests Indian shopkeepers are likely to quote the price in Pound or Euro. We believe that our pricing policy should make you feel at home. In England £7 for a sandwich maybe reasonable but it is outrageous in India, but we don’t want you to know that. The Indian shopkeeper will charge you no more than what you would have charged an innocent Indian tourist visiting your country. Do try our £5 ‘samosas’, we may give it at half the price if the whole team orders. Make sure you give exact change, don’t handover `1000 bill to strangers, don’t discuss your daily allowance with everyone, listen to your mom’s advice. The Skype phone may not work well in India, try Global Calling options from any of our leading Telecom Service providers.

3. Greetings: The concept of Namaste as our greeting is often over emphasized by our Film & TV industry. Back in 1967 we stopped using Namaste to greet each other. My parents tried very hard each time some uninvited guest showed up at our house and I would lock myself in the bathroom till they leave. The next generation (that is my generation and beyond) would simply paste a Namaste poster on the main door as a warning sign (no Namaste beyond this point!) These days when parents wake up kids by saying something western like, ‘good morning beta, rise and shine’, what they often get in return cannot be printed on a family blog. If you do meet some of our young volunteers at the games please ask them not to use F word at home and yes we do not think it is cool to put this American poster on the door –

4. Protect Individuality: Thanks to our zillions of years old cultural spaghetti we have learned that the best way to protect ones identity is by publicly addressing people by their caste, color, region or belief. This not an attack on Individuality it is in recognition. If someone wants to say that south Indians are more intelligent than north Indians, simply address them as “Madrasi”, thereby causing semi-national-integration of south India. In the same spirit, it is common to address Punjabis, Jats, Marwari, Sindhi, Sardar etc. when pointing out richness of North Indian cultures. Given the situation people may address you as “gora” or “kala” based on your color complexion, much in the same spirit as Buddha would refer to Yin and Yan. If you prefer to be addressed by your sub-caste please do let us know in advance, we will spread the word.

5. Table Manners: You will be at your vulnerable best when someone serves a proper Indian meal. If you like to sample everything in one meal, ask for a Vegetarian Thali. Don’t be shy, ask for a spoon, if there is one missing. A typical veg thali will have Papad (crispy), Salad, 2-3 Curries, 1 Dal (Lentils), Curds, Rice or Pulao, Puris or Roti and a Sweet Dish. There is usually a dash of pickle and salt somewhere hidden which will accidently make way to your mouth all in one go. Keep a bottle of water nearby to swallow it. The green leaves sprinkled on curries are coriander leaves, which are usually put to camouflage green chilies. You can start with Papad and Salad while developing a strategy on how to handle the rest of the contents. It is ok to dig into pulao and curries with spoon to eliminate green & red chilies, green & black cardamom, pepper, cloves, and anything that looks like a residual part of an insect. Bon Appétit!

What about the medals tally? That we have been told is all fixed in advance. Have a safe trip back. And yes, if you are planning to sell your digital camera let me know, I can get you a good price for it.

Be Relevant

noreply@blogger.com (Lalit Chowdhary) — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 11:17:07 PDT

This should come as no surprise to anyone, “be specific” is OUT and “be relevant” is IN. A few years ago, one could trap any unsuspecting Argumentative Indian by asking him/her to be specific. For example, if someone made an argument that growth in Indian IT sector is slowing down a counter attack around specificity will give one power to shift the argument from Indian IT sector to US Presidential Elections. I found that simply by asking person to be specific, I seized control over the conversation and half the battle was won. In most cases people were caught off guard and unable to produce data in support of their “global generalization”. That has now changed. Unfortunately due to ubiquitous access to search engines in general and Google in specific, these days’ people have detailed drill down data on their arguments. They are not only prepared but also welcome the “be specific” challenge! The new mantra for speedy victory in an argument is to “be relevant”. Remember the argument over introduction of Genetically Modified BT Cotton and BT Brinjals? BT Cotton was immediately accepted as it helped reduce farmer suicides but BT Brinjals were rejected since the Indian Markets had attained self sufficiency on food adulteration. BT Brinjals failed the “be relevant” test. Having established the power of “be relevant” in an argument let us review argumentation in its finer details.

It must either be due to our upbringing or genetic built we do not to speak up and exercise our democratic right to argue and squish our opponents’ stupid arguments. This gives undue advantage to let people win arguments on the merit of age, senior position, social status (money) or physical power. Let all this not come in your way of making a new beginning. An opening statement in an argument establishes superiority over others. While people with authority start their argument by blah-blah-ing their position or expertise, you can skip the introduction niceties and straightaway take “high ground” position. Taking high ground is like assuming a priesthood status. This allows you to pass judgment on the group you are addressing, don’t forget to mince every word that follows. The biggest advantage of taking high ground is that when people retaliate it never reaches your level. I leave you with some tools to make an opening statement in an ongoing debate that will give you high ground status –

Callous indifference …
Important issue merits attention …
In this dog-eat-dog world …
Ridicule the system, or be part of the change …
The bottom line is …
While it is important to highlight the problem, a solution mindset will help …
It may not be visible to most of you, but the biggest problem is …
Seemingly harmless but potentially dangerous …
There is a broader issue here …
While at one level, I understand the concern, however …

Source

We have a good opening line to establish high ground position and predisposition towards non relevance of statistical data. But is this enough to win the debate? Not really, by changing the fundamental principles of good argument we have changed the game. Our opponents were not prepared to meet a challenge from unexpected quarter, they are angry. Let me alert you with some of the commonly known traps which will be deployed by your opponents to destroy your reputation -

1. Level Playing Field: Since it is difficult for people to take pot shots at the high ground, they will become nice and offer to join you. Beware of this trap, it is to sabotage your position. A typical behind-the-back-sneaker will take position by your side by saying something like, “I agree with Lalit here, in fact I will go a step further …” If you compromise your position by accepting the offered support, prepare for downhill journey.

2. Emotional Stereotypes: We must admit that we live in a busy world. At any given point we can be accused of apathy toward things like not attending to children's emotional needs or ignoring social causes or indifferent attitude towards sports, non-participation in democratic process of our nation, not voicing our opinion on matters of urgency like poverty, pets, environment, religion, water shortage etc. Emotional stereotype attack by pointing this specific weakness in us. They feel safe in the herds and will invite you to be part of some inner circle. Avoid them like a bad habit.

3. Intellectual Dilemma: When someone poses a pointed question like, “Ok we have been listening to your animated argument, why don’t you give us a solution?” You are now confronted with intellectual dilemma; if you give the solution they will ridicule you and if you don’t they doubt your intentions. This could be tricky.

4. Empowered Data Freaks: Most vocal of the arguments come from people who have newly acquired access to Internet. A few hours on Internet can empower any person to become an authority over “BP Oil Spill.” Most people believe they had sufficient technical knowledge to stop the leak and clean up the oceans. It is easy to conquer them, simply ignore them. They get easily frustrated when ignored and they leave the scene of debate, returning back to their Farmsville game.

Depending on the nature of argument, you will be confronted by some of the above traps. This is where you judiciously break your opponent by the “be relevant” logic. Intellectual Dilemma is the most difficult to crack, so let me help you with building on a scenario. You have jumped in the middle of a heated debate on “gross misuse of public fund in 2010 Commonwealth Games.” You have taken a high ground by saying something utterly stupid like, “we can either ridicule the system, mock our sports minister or be an agent of change. Government needs technical people like us to volunteer and help our country to do well during the CWG.” This may not gel well with the group and someone will challenge your bluff by posing a direct question, “we agree with your proposal, you lead the way and we will follow you.” You are now completely trapped; it would have been lot more fun if they had mocked your suggestion! My advice in such situation is to look for a white board. Get someone from the group (there is always an emotional stereotype in the room) to draw a table of tasks, days of the week and names of the volunteers. You retain high ground by saying that you will fill in your name at the very end, for the task which is not taken by anyone. Trust me the group will immediately disperse or switch the topic. See we just proved that there is no misuse of public funds. Case closed.

How to read LinkedIn Recommendations

noreply@blogger.com (Lalit Chowdhary) — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 00:01:12 PDT

They say that LinkedIn is quite popular these days, more than 6 million professionals from India and all that. Let me guess, so we have nearly 5.993 million potential job seekers and if a downturn was to hit us, the 7,500 recruiters’ on India LinkedIn will be our saviors! If this is of any discomfort to you, one headhunter per 800 professionals is slightly worse than 1 police person per 750 Indian Citizen! Not so long ago opening a LinkedIn account was considered as blasphemy. Sending connection request to managers was equivalent to handing over resignation letter. One must admit that these days bosses have become tolerant to LinkedIn at work. Like any other social networking media, LinkedIn brings in new types of challenges for the managers and business leaders.

One would have expected LinkedIn to provide interactive tools which will allow individuals to promote their work in unique ways. Unfortunately there is only one way to show-off, i.e. to get someone to write a recommendation. This is easier said than done. I did some back-of-the-blackberry calculations, to get 5 recommendations for everyone in India and assuming 5 minutes to write each reco, the total effort estimate is 1250 person years. Considering this to be longer than my lifetime I promised never to write a reco (for free). You know how social pressures work in our country; anyways I have since modified rules of engagement which seem to be working ok so far. If someone wants me to write reco, I ask them to send me a draft. Once I get the basic raw material, I do some word chiseling and submit the entry as my original work. Most people don’t like this approach; they are perhaps shy to blow their own vuvuzela.

When it comes to writing recommendation, how it should work and how it actually works are two different things? Let us consider if someone wanted to sell a house or a car. First the seller will read a few advertisements and then go for one most appropriate to describe the property or the car. LinkedIn recommendations are written in much the same way. Perhaps in the early big-bang years of LinkedIn a few original recommendations got written and since then most of the people have been recycling it with minor modifications. As a social media expert, I was keen to learn the implications of this practice. I have been doing some catch up reading to sound more intelligent in my arguments. Steven D Levitt and Stephen J Dubner’s Freakonomics have a complete chapter dedicated to “words used to describe real estate properties and correlation with its selling price”. I will wait here till you read the referred article, if not the complete book.

No one so far has casted any doubts on the theory proposed by the authors of Freakonomics. Then it must be safe to assume that there is strong correlation between the recommendations and chances of getting a higher paying job offer. This changes the dynamics and after reading my blog, I promise that you will never accept casual recommendations from strangers. Not only the content of the recommendation is important but also who is making this recommendation is important. We interpret recommendation from “Supervisors”, “Colleagues” and if you insist “Subordinates”. We list here 10 most common terms used to describe individuals in LinkedIn India recommendations (listed in alphabetic order) and its interpretation based on relationship with the recommender.

Ability to Listen
1. Supervisor: Ability to listen with apathy.
2. Colleague: Ability to listen with empathy.
3. Subordinate: Ability to listen with sympathy.
Asset to the organization
1. Supervisor: We will be doing you a favor if we provide more details.
2. Colleague: Well connected with bosses.
3. Subordinate: Well networked.
Can-do attitude
1. Supervisor: manages our customer support.
2. Colleague: works late in office.
3. Subordinate: makes us work late in office.
Extremely intelligent
1. Supervisor: Our Company has policy of hiring owner’s relatives. This one we hired from market.
2. Colleague: The only person in our who can solve Rubik’s cube
3. Subordinate: Taught us how to solve Sudoku puzzles
Best, Great or Amazing Person
1. Supervisor: He knows how stuff works around here
2. Colleague: Great source of company gossip
3. Subordinate: Orders Pizzas if we work weekends.
Hands-on, Technical, Roll-up sleeves, Knowledgeable Resource
1. Supervisor: Sends me all these interesting articles & analysis reports.
2. Colleague: Taught me how to get past company firewall
3. Subordinate: Preaches UNIX but uses Microsoft.
Helpful, Team Oriented and Hard working Person
1. Supervisor: If he/she takes a day off everything breaks down
2. Colleague: If he/she takes a day off apply for leave
3. Subordinate: If he/she takes a day off never delegates
Out-of-box Thinker
1. Supervisor: Argumentative but good at PowerPoint Presentation.
2. Colleague: Argumentative but good in strategy, misfit in current team
3. Subordinate: Argumentative but gives good advice, misfit in current job.
Persistent, Thorough, Determined
1. Supervisor: Stressed
2. Colleague: Highly Stressed
3. Subordinate: We never knew stress is contagious
Very cool
1. Supervisor: Wears colorful dresses though we do not approve of it.
2. Colleague: Can we change that Ringtone.
3. Subordinate: Gives us tips on social media.

I somehow get a feeling that you have not been taking this article very seriously. I try not to intimidate people, but I was handed over this note from LinkedIn India Twitter account which was fairly scary. It talks about people damaging their reputation by connecting their Twitter account to LinkedIn and tweeting casual trivia, jokes and location updates. This proves that LinkedIn is part of serious office work. Just like you wouldn’t send trivia or jokes using company email; likewise you are expected to behave on LinkedIn. How you guard your reputation from now on is our concern.

Guarding Reputation of Royal Jodhpur Palace

We believe we can develop comprehensive methods of measuring reputation on LinkedIn. Performing qualitative and quantitative analysis of recommendations, connections, education and organizations attended etc reputation can be measured. We plan to develop consulting services to help our patrons to repair their damaged reputation. We will also help in drafting recommendations (for fee) so that they can find a job which is much better than what they deserve! All this is new frontiers of technology and we are excited to be the first ones taking a crack at it. We give a sneak peek into some of the work-in-progress. We plan to raise some venture funding as soon as our application is ready and accepted by LinkedIn. Stay Tuned...

Cheat sheet	Supervisor	Colleague	Subordinate
Weight	50%	30%	20%
good listener	5	9	8
asset to the organization	10	4	4
can-do attitude	9	5	6
Extremely intelligent	8	10	5
the best, greatest and amazing person	2	3	7
hands-on, technical, roll-up sleeves, nerdy person	7	6	3
helpful, team oriented and hard working person	4	7	9
out-of-box thinker	3	2	2
persistent, thorough and determined	6	8	1
very cool	1	1	10

Example 1

1 or more	of my supervisors think I am	asset to the organization	10
1 or more	of my colleagues or friends think I am	extremely intelligent	10
1 or more	of my subordinates think I am	very cool	10
	My overall reputation is	10

Example 2

1 or more	of my supervisors think I am	out-of-box thinker	3
1 or more	of my colleagues or friends think I am	can-do attitude	5
1 or more	of my subordinates think I am	good listener	8
	My overall reputation is	4.6

How to Handle Promotions

noreply@blogger.com (Lalit Chowdhary) — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 22:14:34 PDT

The most likely reason for you to be reading this blog is that you have recently been promoted. Let me at the outset offer you my heartiest congratulations. It is good to get the recognition for spending more than industry average time with one company. Considering the alternatives available in a growing market place it is not hard to imagine what you would have done if they had not promoted you this year, but today is not the day to discuss it. The events leading to your promotion announcement have equal importance; you must make a note of it in your daily diary for a need may later arise to narrate this day to your grandchildren.

Dear diary, today, was an ordinary day but who could tell it was all going to change this very day. I was making an important point on ‘operator-overload’ when I was pulled out of the code-review meeting. Many pair of eyes followed me as I walked into big boss’s cabin. Our HR Partner, My Boss and The Big Boss were all facing an empty chair. They all stood up and shook my hand. I tried to keep my composure in this strange setting. I mumbled a short Ganapathi Shloka in case there were any dark forces working towards materializing layoffs. The gaze from all three was so penetrating that I turned back to see if it left a mark on the wall behind. A sealed letter was thrust in my direction and I was urged to read it (aloud.) I opened the letter trying hard to control trembling by feigning fumble. Though the HR team had made no modifications to the 1987 promotion template, my hairs stood at the edge of its seat with the mention of phrases like “contributed to the success of the organization”, “setting high standards” and “promoted to the level of …” It is not that I was not expecting this promotion, why it was last year in the same cabin, I had cried on the subject! Today was no different but the tears I am holding back were that of humility and joy. What will be my parent’s reaction to this news; will I be forgiven for not fathering a male child. I reflected for a moment on how I would look with head shaven as the impending visit to Tirupati Balaji can no longer be postponed. I cursed myself for not preparing a speech to thank the patrons, for all I could muster was, “I will do my best to prove my worth to the organization.” The big boss stood up and gave me a warm handshake, pointing to the door, he said “Nothing less is expected!” With one heavy burden off, I carried another as I came out of the room. The burden of expectations, yes the same burden with which I left my parent’s home in search of a good life?

I ignored the inquisitive eyes as I walked back and shoved the letter in the drawer. I returned back to the code-review meeting but nothing seems to be making sense here anymore. My mind was racing with questions seeking immediate answers to –

Who else is promoted?

What is my new title? There were rumors that they will introduce Assistant Deputy Manager at E4.5 Level. I had no time to look at the details on second page.

How much is the salary raise? Am I in the higher end of raise bracket?

How will Nitin react when he gets this news? He is such a show off!

Should I wait for boss to make this promotion official in next week’s staff meeting? Will I be able to hold for that long?

My train of thoughts halted when someone called out loud, “Nitin! Sir is calling you in his cabin.” Nitin with one glance exchange guessed what was going on; he filled his chest with sufficient oxygen to last the long walk to big boss’s cabin. Everyone looked at me to answer an unasked question? I surrendered, “I think they are distributing promotion letters today!” The code-review meeting was promptly called off and for good reasons. The office as seen from my viewpoint now stands divided into two parts and I belonged to top 30% of the elite group of successfully-promoted employees. Nothing will be the same again.

The biting question still looms large, “did I deserve this promotion or am I part of some corporate conspiracy to promote employees once in every 2.75 years?” In the Indian IT sector things work differently. The promotions are handed over to subdue anxiety caused by using same title for longer than 3 years. Skills are function of time by that I mean if you work in an operation theater as an anesthetist you might as well become a surgeon in the third year simply by inducting new skills. Now that might not be true in some of the hospitals but most of the software engineering workshops operate in that manner. There are industry benchmark criterions for rating skills as average, proficient, or excellent based on the number of years one spends doing a particular activity. Most of the employees know where they stand. There is seldom any argument over skills because if you ever do, you end up in a training workshop and/or six months bench assignment. Anyone who gets promoted based on skills criterion alone is seldom exulted. This blog is not about routine promotions but it is a bible for fast tracking your career.

If everything else was equal, candidate’s virtues become deciding factor for fast track promotions. I would like to classify virtues in three levels in descending order - (a) winning, (b) succeeding and (c) ideating. Let us take some sample conversations that one hears from the team members during a customer reported outage due to product defect. We can easily tell the virtue level of participants based on how they react in this situation –

Winning :-

“if we can get the error code or state of device, we can crack the problem within minutes”
“by introducing breakpoints, I can reproduce the problem in the lab, in a jiffy”
“let us just call the customer directly and start the debugging session”
Noteworthy Attributes: Impatience, Risk Taking, and Unreasonable Commitment.

Succeeding :-

“let us look at the data available and see why this problem is happening”
“why don’t we make a tiger team to reproduce the exact problem in the lab”
“let us not commit a date till we are certain of the root cause”
Noteworthy Attributes: Patience, Analytical, and Guided Caution

Ideating :-

“last time when customer complained of the similar issue, the problem was at their end.”
“how can we be sure if we have reproduced the same issue”
“don’t want them to call me at odd hours; company should plan for such exigencies.”
Noteworthy Attributes: Shifting of responsibility, Speculating and Non-commitment.

A good appraisal process is designed to capture these subtle differences in personalities and promote people with winning attributes. This makes everyday life of software engineers worthwhile. Every conversation needs to be weighed. There are measures and marks for spring in the walk. In a real situation, one would argue that everyone collaborates equally to solve the problem. Remember managers get credit for “team” performance. That explains why most of the high performing managers are good at handling crisis. Their own promotion is contingent to solving a crisis that is often created by them or in their honor! Usually Individual Contributors (a respectful title for someone who fixes defects coded by his/her migrant friends) with “winning” attributes emerge on the top of the list for promotion. It is very hard for employees with virtues of “success” to accept this model. They get easily disillusioned with the appraisal process and are constantly seeking a fair system. Things get really out of hand when folks with “success” virtues get promoted together with others. The people with “ideating” virtues are not even looking for promotion and are genuinely scornful when promoted. I learned about this when a pastry shop near our office reported drop in sales after promotion announcements in certain years.

Have you ever tried to find a good reason for not being promoted? Now this is exactly where everyone washes hands off the proceedings. A very close friend of mine (name withheld on request from LinkedIn) had put in his papers immediately after 5^th unsuccessful promotion year. This (resignation) gave him enough courage to challenge the appraisal system and here is what I learned. Most companies have written policy to not entertain any promotion gossips and hearsay. When someone reports resignation on being promoted with other non-deserving candidates makes the discussion a corporate espionage and HR deals with it in an official manner. It is considered perfectly normal when someone expecting a promotion resigns for not getting one. My friend was naïve; he provided details of his next employment to his supervisor, as a proof that the industry has found him worthy of higher rank. Armed with additional inputs, his Manager launched a fresh campaign to promote his candidature. There were many possible outcomes of this adventure but none as tragic. HR promised to promote him in due course on the condition he withdraws resignation. He accepted the condition and they officially added him to the next year’s list of promotion prospects, subject to budgetary approvals. His manager’s budget was duly reduced by 15% with a 10% year on year improvement! He is the only non-HR professional on the LinkedIn using their paid service. My friend provided me with deep insight into how Organizations are structured with graphic details. I use this case study to drive the message home. “We are in the same tent as the clowns and the freaks.” ~ Edward Murrow

Typical India R&D Center Org structure (Picture Credit)

Let us recap: The current rules for engagement are “winners” get out-of-turn promotion and “successful” get on-turn promotion. It is not very difficult for successful people to demonstrate winning virtues. Pay attention to the language, you have to demo not necessarily deliver. The transition from success to winning is lot easier than drifting towards inaction. Every person contributes towards winning but only few are able to articulate and align. Not willing to change will result in more work for less money.

PS: Standard Disclaimers, such as this article is figment of someone's imagination, there is no truth in this publication. It is purely written for entertainment purpose and of course to get more hits on this web page. Names and incidents reported are fictional and may have coincidental resemblance. It is not written to hurt anyones' feelings. Children below the age of 58 years must be accompanied by adults when reading this blog. No animals were hurt in testing our products. We condemn child labor. We suggest further reading on how to ban fur jackets.

SEO Guide to Twitter User Psychology

noreply@blogger.com (Lalit Chowdhary) — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 08:36:28 PDT

Many established SEO players with large distribution networks are finding it difficult to crack and thus gain from the rise of Twitter. Twitter offers very little stats on the tweeting tatterns of its’ users and to make matters worse Google Analytics is not helpful. I make a small but not so humble beginning on Psychological Classification of Twitter users which will benefit the SEO in more than one way. I would expect this work to be taken forward and a new branch of twitorial-psychology be attributed to me. For the purpose of a short blog discussion we are treating only those Twitter users in our labs that have been active before January 2010. A comprehensive study titled “Psychological State of the Twitter” is a paid report available on request.

Classification based on Following Intensity

Personality Classification	Followings
Confident	0
Fanatic: Media shy but couldn’t resist when Lady Gaga joined.	1-5
Live wire: Must act on every incoming message. Overwhelms if number of unread messages go over 25. Good for CPA traffic.	6-19
Blogger: Perpetual search for Wow requires constant refreshing of the Following list. Unpredictable and whimsical for SEO purpose. Most likely a full-time blogger making a cautious entry to Twitter.	20-99
Enthusiast: Highly compromised criterion for Following. Evolved trending topic sensors. Susceptible to reciprocate. Sincerely acts on #FF tag.	100-999
Twiparazzi: Constantly searching tools for reciprocating Followers. An aspiring Social Media Expert.	1,000-9,999
Computer Generated Social Media Entity	10,000 or more

Classification based on Lord of Followership

Popularity Classification	Followers
Tweech: Self disrespecting Twitter Leech. Botnets use these users for testing new twitter applications.	0
Ditched: Mostly inactive account whose last message reads “taking dog out for a walk!” Please report missing person if the dog has returned home. Sometimes people with high traffic generation fall into this class. Confucius once said “when you find yourself in a hole, stop tweeting!”	1-5
Sr. Management: Typically admin of VP of Engineering will inform the team of boss joining Twitter. A follow up report is sent to boss with a congratulatory note for creating a world record of fastest zero to ten Followers. Then a new VP joins and a new record is set!	6-19
Closed Circuit: Member of - gang of friends, batch-mates, colleagues or hobbyists. Sends out cryptic messages like “Party cancelled RT @groupie_x TPIN compromised await resync #TBar”	20-99
Open Circuit: This kind of growth in Followers, if organic, is noted only for popular members of publicly listed groups, opposition parties and radical thinkers.	100-999
Lobbyist: Powerful local media personalities who have adapted well to Twitter.	1,000-9,999
Globbyist: Powerful Global media personalities who have adapted well to Twitter.	10,000-99,999
Demi-Gods: Rare human beings, pop stars, film stars, celebrity etc. trendy, now and happening places on Twitter.	100,000 or more

Send Tweets / Day (averaged over a month)

Classification	Tweets /Day
Stuck: Ok, now help me with one grammatically correct and intellectually stimulating sentence which will not be misunderstood by someone reading out of context or worse still it will not be transformed by an inadvertent RT truncation?	0
SETI: Search for Enhanced Twitter Intelligence project sending out periodic probes to test if their Followers are living or dead.	0.1-0.4
Friends of Twitter: Rare but sensible specimens.	0.5-2.0
Super Humans: Common users suffering from superfluous wisdom.	2.1-5.0
X-Men: (in)Human Generating Recommendation Engines – pointing to random websites or updating biological changes. Possibly suffering from acute attention deficiency syndrome.	5.1-19.9
Computer Generated Recommendation Engine	20-99
Twitter Defect, report it to authorities.	> 100

Synthesis of Classification

Super Class based on acquired knowledge	Following	Followers	Send Tweets/ Day
Known twitter bug, don’t panic!	0	0	x
Practice shooting in the dark, it is more fun!	x	0	x
Restrict spying on your kids/spouse to FB!	1-5	0	0
Should use birth control pills?	>5	0	0
Use messenger, it still works	1-19	1-5	x
Contact our family astrologer before sending your first tweet message.	5-99	5-99	0
Seem like ideal usage, but do you really expect people to read ~150 messages everyday?	5-99	5-99	1-2
Use Google Wave, it has better threading	5-99	5-99	3-19
You are just dumb lucky, Twitter will soon be changing its policy on inactive users.	>1	>1	>20
Caught in the wrong job, but we recommend you hold on to it!	5-99	100-999	2-20
Caught in the wrong job, we recommend you purchase our detailed report!	5-99	1,000-9,999	2-20
You have the potential to reach Celebrity status.	5-99	>10,000	2-20
So on and so forth

Get the best out of Twitter -

Recommendation	Received Total Tweets /Day
Check device client at your end, everything seems ok at our end.	0
Cherry picking, uh!	1-4
Highly personalized	5-19
(MAGIC) Movies Astrology Games Immigrants and Celebs	20-99
Get rid of three computer generated recommendation engines and you are back to MAGIC!	100-999
When did you last log-in Twitter? Someone else might be reading your messages and perhaps benefiting from it.	> 1,000

I know what you did this summer

noreply@blogger.com (Lalit Chowdhary) — Mon, 24 May 2010 09:35:32 PDT

If winter is associated with depression, summer belongs to anxiety. The panic attacks amongst parents in Gurgaon peaks in the 2^nd week of May as most of the schools shut down for summer holidays. I present a case-study to understand the root cause of this anxiety and its correlation with summer. Mrs. Bhalla mother of two adorable kids is as loving a mom as Gods could make them. It was one of those typical days in summer holiday; Mrs. Bhalla with kids packed in the back seat of car was dashing towards Tau Devi Lal Stadium to drop her son Rohan for Basketball Lessons. On the way Rohan gets a call from his friend Abhi. Rohan declares a change of plan. Mrs. Bhalla makes a dangerous u-turn at the Medicity intersection, averting business for the hospital close at hand. Rishika with her acute hearing sense smells a bowling trip plan. She would like to give a miss to her keyboard lessons to lend this idea moral support, which if accepted, would be major deviation to Rohan’s agreement with Abhi. A war breaks out in the back seat. Mrs. Bhalla continues to drive in circles on the sector-34 roundabout letting the kids resolve this issue democratically. Rishika votes for homeward bound until Rohan apologizes for using certain unspecified bad words. Mrs. Bhalla would like to report this to her husband but ends up calling Sanjay Medicals. Rohan considering the options surrenders an unconditional apology with an inner resolve to get even later in the day. The party resumes their journey towards Tansen Music Academy. In a parallel universe Abhi’s no-nonsense-mom is going through tough negotiations in a different car. Rohan gets a call again and is informed that Abhi has reached TDL Stadium as per the original plan. Bhalla family is now at the exact midpoint between the two hobby schools. Rishika enquires why Rohan can’t take the rickshaw. It was all-his-fault anyways. Rohan is asked to move to the front seat to avert World War 2. He starts fiddling with the car stereo but Rishika is in control of changing channels with the remote in the back seat…
(Note from the author: Names changed to protect the innocent.)

As fate would have it, some of the moms in our apartment complex have cornered me into volunteering for organizing workshop for children to keep them productively engaged in sustained learning. What they actually want is to keep children off TV and Internet between 11am to 6pm during which they cannot be officially ~~cooked~~ kicked out of homes. I aspire to become President of our RWA (Residents Welfare Association) to get preferred services from the vendors. Besides, I had always wanted to do something for the children and for some strange reason wasn’t getting the support from family members. My social responsibilities at the apartment complex start and end with providing e-suggestions on our Google-group. Typical examples of my contribution would read as follows –

Security caught napping. 25 mosquitoes followed me to the apartment.
The babies are requested not to leave nappies in the dustbin placed near the lift lobby. Cats are planning treasure hunt tonight.
Kindly install mirrors in the lift to reduce episodes of Igloophobia (fear of droppings in a moving lift).
Owners please turn the music-on for guardian pet. Research shows that music reduces anxiety in pets by 79%.
Driver of HRxxAJ5xx7 is flirting with our maid. Please ignore if you don’t have driver.

For the uninitiated, Gurgaon community is different from other IT enabled towns like Bengaluru, Chennai and Hyderabad. One can point out common elements like Shiamak Davar dance classes, NIIT computer centers, PVR 3D cinema halls, MGF mall and wonder what could be the difference? Once you scratch the surface you will find that Gurgaon is very sensitive to lifestyle hobbies. There is no demand for Ikebana, Candle Making, Cookery, Bharatnatyam and Shloka Recitation classes. Last year we did try to find a clay modeling expert, the home tuition agent sent a call-center employee who was in between jobs. He had rudimentary clay modeling skills and was straight out of sympathetically modulated waves of a prime time TV serial. Kids took over fixing his life on social networking sites, cell-phone preferences, hairstyle, wardrobe etc. Wife started interviewing all his girlfriends for the most suitable match and I was tasked with finding him a suitable job. I had to take affirmative pest control action as things started getting out of control and more clay modeling tutors were showing up at our place.

I am a firm believer of multiple-intelligence theory of Howard Gardner. In fact, I am personally suffering from it. There is a need to identify and develop intelligence in the domains that are completely ignored by the schooling system. This year we are focusing on Logic Smart and Image Smart intelligences in our colony.

Most parents haven’t tapped the creative power of the computer. Playing mindless games or watching you-tube video or full-time texting messaging on social networking may be our future but there are others activities which can be learned as well on the computer.

Video Editing Project: Microsoft Movie Maker is fun software for children to learn. Take two projects (a) Public Speaking and (b) Skit @ Home. Identify a topic of interest and allow an hour of preparation on who is going to do what. Follow the simple rule of collecting 10:1 ratio of stock to final product.
Photo Scanning Project: If you have a good quality scanner at home teach children how to scan and file photos. Most scanners come with a photo editor; if not just use Picasa or any other Free Editor. This can also be a source of earning small amount of pocket money, e.g. Rs 1 per printed photos.
Documentation Scanning Project: We are heading towards a paperless future. It is important to scan and file all your important papers in digital PDF files. This again is a great opportunity for kids to earn pocket money.
DJ Mixing Project: It is difficult to get kids excited about old songs. However if we give them an opportunity to create a Hustle, Hip-hop or Remix version of 70’s or 80’s Hindi music could be great fun. Virtual DJ demo version comes with a 20 day time limit which is good enough for a summer project and the home edition cost Rs 2500.
Photo-shoot Project: We had done a flower project using a simple 8 megapixel automatic camera to click different types of flowers in our Apartment complex. Documenting flora and fauna could be great way to keep children busy.

I am sure my fellow readers would have better recommendations for summer holidays. Please do share your thoughts.

Side effects of Blogging

noreply@blogger.com (Lalit Chowdhary) — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 08:27:00 PST

Around 10 years ago, Internet created a new breed of online species by successfully mating an introvert, self-centered, highly-opinionated, always-right, easily-hurt, attention-deficient, boring-as-hell author with an online media celebrity. The specific purpose of this experiment was to develop highly alert web surfers with a penchant for quality content on the Internet; the new species was named web-loggers. Most of the humans had already declined the job offer, hence the need to find one online. It was known from the beginning that this online social experiment could go wrong. And it did, but let us get-over-it, we-bloggers are here to stay!

Source

The bloggers often live in closed community called blogosphere. They create content instead of web-logging, which is the worst side effect of the breeder reaction. The topics are selected by the blogger from the popularity of tag-cloud. One wonders why? Let us say the current topic of interest is “Economic Failure of Greece” and 20 subject matter experts have taken the initiative to cover it in full detail. Why would then 200,000 bloggers need to write on the same subject, what more do they have to offer? Is there a mandate from World Bank to hear every bloggers’ view before acting on the catastrophe?

I think the bloggers usually do not care so much about the merit of the topic since most of them are anyways faced with a writer’s block. As soon as they set sight on a subject, they have this irresistible itch to enlighten everyone with their superior insight on the topic. Having published their article the blogger go round leaving a bundle of comments on the fraternity blogs. It is customary within the community to return visit to each one of the commentators’ blog and reciprocate with comments. In theory this could create infinite page views and thus huge amount of advertisement revenue making each blogger a millionaire. In reality it creates an ego-fodder for bloggers also known as reciprocity!

The reciprocity process is quite time consuming and the compliance levels are dropping too. In fact people do not take the trouble of pressing the colorful social buttons (Digg, Stumble, Like, Buzz etc). These days’ bloggers tend to become members of certain congresses of bloggers. The websites facilitating such meeting of minds provide collaboration tools that allow generous helping of fodder. Having gone through the process I have realized that there is no long term-benefit in collecting & returning comments. I pretend to write humor, so I go looking for similar stuff and leave unsolicited comments on blogs that make claims of being humorous. Sample comments - “Your interpretations of Greece collapse linking with their performance in Olympics made be split up with laughter”, “LOL, yeah I agree Pluto should be called Planet of Posterity... ha! ha! ha!” etc. etc. It becomes clear to the writer that commenter has not read the article with sincerity it deserved. How could one miss out the overall satire and comment by picking on just one funny line from the article. Bloggers get hurt easily by the such comments, but seldom react, instead they thank the commentator profusely and make humble pleas to read and comment on some more articles (which is of course is their own sweet way of punishing!)

As the bloggers mature they change tactics. If you have been blogging long enough and have respectful three digits or more RSS feeders, you can’t be seen hunting for comments. They would love to take up guest writer opportunities on popular blog aggregation websites. One often wonders why a cuckoo writer leaves his/her site and lay eggs in other’s nest. It is a complicated psychology. One Mr Manoj Acharya, Entrepreneur, started India Leadership Network on LinkedIn. This LinkedIn group gained popularity and claimed 50,000 members in a short period. I think most of the folks joined the group in the hope to take up Leadership assignments just by being a chosen member of an elite club? Seeking attention partly explains why people look for guest authorship. The more complicated answer can be found by watching elders, like Seth Godin, who is a leading blogger, a successful author and marketing guru. Seth Godin distributed a free eBook in Dec 2009 featuring than 75 creative writers. I followed each one of the recommendation and found something in common. Seth Godin was a guest writer on most of his own recommendation. This is called elitist reciprocity which is the highest form of flattery one can offer oneself. If you sense any cynicism in the above explanation it has nothing to do with author being denied writer’s assignment at GigaOm!

Closer to home we have Indiblogger, WATBlog and BigAdda who facilitate Indian bloggers to collaborate. Indiblogger excels in reciprocity, WATBlog provides opportunity to guest bloggers and BigAdda is famous for hosting celebrities (like Amitabh Bachchan) and handing out goodies. As per my analysis based on the Alexa Ranking “Reciprocity” is the best approach to reach out to soft heart of a blogger and win their wholesome confidence. Indiblogger seem to be gaining ground over other two.

A discussion on blogger’s life will be incomplete without discussing Internet’s role as that of an open-fair-democratic-online-media. It is a secret desire of every blogger to master the art of “Internet Traffic Engineering (read SEO)” so that they can take control of every Ranking Systems out there. I stumbled upon this unique blogger ranking website http://www.youngestblogger.com/. As a disclaimer let me offer that I am not connected to the author or even listed there. You may note that most of the top bloggers listed here are either advising “how to make money online” or “blog about some geeky-trendy-stuff which the world doesn't care about”. How can the aunty next door put a “Biryani” recipe on her foodie blog is expected to make it to this list? The point I am trying to make is that the stuff world cares about has limited viewer ship, virtually no money and the online media stays away from them. If you wish to test my theory, open an Adword account and place a call on Google, announce yourself as a budding young blogger, no one will return your call till you publish a public apology in leading newspapers.

The online marketers are running after the people who are paying money to have them followed. The modus operandi is to make one time investment to jump the rating systems, target around 200K+ readers and reap lifelong benefits. Some of the engineers reading this may not agree with my generalization. Here is the proof. Four top ranking bloggers jump out in Alexa ranking, all on a single day is a bit too much of a coincidence, don’t you think.So what does this all prove? My guess is that blogs are like aliens, when they do make an appearance usually end up becoming a block-buster.

How to become a Leader in roughly 7 minutes!

noreply@blogger.com (Lalit Chowdhary) — Sat, 08 May 2010 10:13:14 PDT

There isn’t much time left now, is it? The double-dip predicted for Global Recession is round the corner. Much depends on the performance of Indian Economy to bailout the western world of this economic mess. This is also a big opportunity for all the managers and above to demonstrate Leadership strengths and save the west from plunging into dark economic ages. Performing at our own sweet Hindu pace and performing under billion watchful eyes are two different ball games. One wrong move and the US economy could go the Greece way. This is not the time to be judgmental about our under-performing colleagues or settle scores with “told you so!” snide remarks. It is time to get down to brass-tacks.

Mind can be molded to be a leader, if it was not born to be one!

A brief economic history of India: In the olden days people had better understanding of the movements of heavenly bodies than the landscape across the river. There was an imminent surge of high potential explorers to map the turf. One of the popular beliefs amongst early explorers was to search for a place on earth which held keys to wealth, knowledge and mystical powers in its bosom. From Alexander to Mountbatten and from land to the sea route, the explorers flocked in and none were disappointed by what they found but blessed were those who chose to settle down. You guessed it right; these folks were searching for India. What followed was healthy exchange of business propositions, knowledge sharing and babies. One must appreciate that the European and Persian societies had well developed mathematics and alchemy but somehow they missed out on including Zero to the number system. The discovery of the fact that world was oblivious of number zero provided discourse-ammunition to invited speakers from India at every valedictory function. The teachers’ communities hailed the finding of a new number and hastily assigned it to many deserving students. The finance fraternity cheered the discovery with tears of joy; with help of zero they could actually balance the balance-sheets.

The Farmer’s Dilemma gives birth to a unique growth model! In early days, families appointed their eldest son to negotiate trade. Trading was a dull and boring job. It was not even full time, only when the family had something to offer to the market, e.g. cows, crops or child marriages, negotiation skills were needed. Over the period it was found that some folks had better trading skills, these smart cookies were assigned trading as full time job in the community. The traders soon fell on hard times since the income from transaction fees was not sufficient to feed a family doubling every 4 years. The concept of lending money was thus introduced in India for the first time. The innovation in this model was that meager 2% monthly compound interest could double money base in less than 3 years. While the farmers did all the hard work and manage the risk, the lender just watched the Capital grow. This model ensured that if the farmers want to make money they need to double capacity in less than 3 years else the lender will buy them out. The critical error made by segregating smart people for the purpose of trading resulted in diffusion of intellectual capital within farming community. This lead to eventual commoditization of goods and services. No one ever challenged the need or purpose of Compound Interest based growth model. This model was subsequently adopted by the global economies for developing banking and finance system.

As we prepare ourselves to embrace the power of a leader, it is important to feel proud about our rich heritage. We need to acquire deep insight into mathematical manipulations and be totally up-to-date on growth models. It is presumed that BFSI sector provides employment to almost half of the human population. It has taken the world hundred years to realize that it is best to outsource the BFSI jobs back to the source of its origin. The sudden surge in demand for BFSI jobs in India is putting undue pressure on young professionals to take up leadership assignments early in career. So rapid is the growth for some of the professionals that they have to hold back the urge to address their western colleagues as uncles. The challenge is not to develop cultural accuracy in communication. The challenge is how to overcome obedience and develop authority. I usually run a weekend course tailored to develop “thought leaders” out of “obsequious managers” in just eight hours of intense training at an offsite five star facility. You can now take advantage of the same course online, simply by reading this blog. It should not take more than 7 minutes to get there.

Leaders have three important qualities (a) vision, (b) followers and (c) delegation. We will develop each of these qualities in a systematic and scientifically proven manner:

(a) Vision of a Leader – We often come across the phrase “your guess is as good as mine.” This sums up the vision statement of a Leader. If someone asked the question “How are we going to do it?” and the Leader responds in above manner, a vision statement has been made. It is not that Leader does not know or does not want to enlighten others. It is just that leader is not interested in the “production process”, but is focused on the purpose of it. The main purpose of any business is to make money and the vision statement explains in a simple sentence how their company plans to achieve it. This can become clearer by reading vision statements of some of the admired corporations.

Google: To develop a perfect search engine.

Microsoft: Create experiences that combine the magic of software with the power of Internet services across a world of devices.

Apple: Apple is committed to bringing the best personal computing experience to students, educators, creative professionals and consumers around the world through its innovative hardware, software and Internet offerings.

Nokia: Connecting people and Very Human Technology

Most employees’ rephrase the vision statement in their minds to read as follows: “I will go to office, check emails and try to complete pending actions. If I can avoid taking new assignments today, I may be able to ask for one week vacation.” Satanic as it may sound people still believe that money is the root of all evil and it may lead them to burning hell. Thus most employees take sufficient precautions to abstract their duties to be as distant from money making as possible. We asked several functional heads their understanding of vision statement, following responses were received. Customer Support – our customers keep us busy, get rid of them or outsource my job; HR – we hire best talent, provide them training and organize farewell parties; Finance – we cannot answer this question as we are being audited. You get the picture, right!

It becomes very difficult for in-house training department to bend the minds so twisted. We advise targeted training of worthy candidates only. With our years of experience in Corporate India we have formulated a simple objective test to identify leadership traits in employees; “Given our vision <statement> how do you propose to charge our customers more money?” Tick only one -

(i) We should not charge our customer more that would be illegal.

(ii) We should build new chargeable features.

(iii) We should fix all the defects.

(iv) There should be fewer meetings.

Typical response distribution in a healthy organization is (i) 65%, (ii) 5%, (iii) 10% and (iv) 20%. The leader can be spotted as the desperate fluttering fly in a cold tomato soup! We advise our patrons to shortlist only the top 5% (answer ii above) for Leadership Assignments. The remaining people can volunteer for social causes like “clean Yamuna River”, “tree plantation”, or “donate blankets to the homeless” etc.

(b) Followers –As per Vatsayana there are three types of leaders compatible with three types of followers. Many of my friends argue that a good leader is not looking for followers. The fact of the matter is that most of the companies are still run by a handful of capable leaders. No disrespect to the rest, they have chosen a position of alignment to the leadership team and for the lack of appropriate definition we call them as followers.

Lead by Example (Bull) – We do not recommend this medieval leadership position. In early days of industrialization there was severe dearth of communication tools. The only channel open was that of demonstrable abilities. At each pre-defined milestone the managers were rewarded with certain occult powers. One can draw parallel of these powers in some of the popular “Arcade Games”. These powers are needed to quash exploratory tendencies in the competing managers at ceremonial Budget Review Meetings. By the time one reaches VP Level, the Leader becomes powerful enough to control the free-will of subordinates!

Lead by Direction (Horse) – There were certain flaws in the lead by example situation. New breed of management graduates were joining the industry armed with Spreadsheet Manipulation and Dazzling PowerPoints. Many companies switched to “Management by Objectives” to spare the bully-bosses from review embarrassments. Lead by direction was inspired from “Strategy Games.” Every employee was free to choose his or her path as long as the outcome can be improved. It was customary for managers to submit self-assessment and participate in Annual Appraisal Review. Only the worthy leaders were rewarded with followers. Some companies continue to practice directional approach with minimal supervision.

Lead by Blackberry (Hare) – When Bill Gates wrote the book “Business @ speed of thought”, he wasn’t thinking of Blackberry. As per latest report there are around 100 million smart phone users disposing billions of messages and dispensing ~5000 person years’ of corporate horsepower per day! Smart-phones alone have introduced Management Overhead on unsuspecting followers which did not exist 5 years ago. The impact of this heavy duty decision making engine and its ability to reach out to the last man standing has turned organizations into a hornet’s nest. There is no place to hide except joining social networking sites and shooting SOS messages to friends and family. Many large corporations have migrated from “Lead by Example” to “Lead by BB”, these can be easily identified by their high rate of attrition.

(c) Delegation – is the most misunderstood phenomenon in modern leadership. Back in eighties, delegation was easy, it was routine to report at Boss’ residence after office and attend to errands. Breakdown of Joint-Family system diluted the delegation from a full time job to part-time tidbits. In the current era it is difficult to say what one might get assigned in the guise of delegation. Take the example of Chief Operating Officer position. This position was created simply to delegate all the difficult tasks of CEO to an unsuspecting COO.

It is difficult to teach delegation to mature managers. We have developed an approach of seizure of initiative for the aspiring managers. Reach out to the senior most person in your organization, mention that you are under utilized and would like to contribute more. Seize the first thing offered. Return to your seat and draft an email explaining to your boss and colleagues your inability to perform current assignment in the wake of higher order delegation. This communication will give seizures to your boss and put your colleagues in a very awkward uninitiated position. Don’t expect any support from anyone; the email was just announcement of your intentions. If you get the work done you have learned the skills of power transfer by effective self-delegation. No words of caution here, we are here to make Leaders not friends.

Interactive Interpretations of Indus Script

noreply@blogger.com (Lalit Chowdhary) — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 10:39:58 PDT

I accept that we have not been good at keeping records and cannot provide exact proof of our grandparent’s formal education. You will have to take my word for it, as in my part of world, the word goes longer than the US Treasury Bill. By extension of the logic my grandfather would have made similar claims if the question was indeed presented to him. This iterative process will lead us back in history 5500 years old Harappan dugout, where the world’s first writing inscriptions were found (see figure below). This is as much evidence one could produce by means of deduction logic to one’s rich cultural heritage and education background.

Anyone with basic SMS texting skills can translate this inscription to be read as “My Eyes are Square (sore) – (signed) V”. The initials V could stand for Vikramadatya or Venketeshwaram but let us not get personal here. Excited by the early success on my abilities to interpret ancient script, I set out for some in-depth research. Thankfully the folks at Harappa.com have meticulously documented and made the artifacts available for public scrutiny. I vaguely recollect from my early education that our 5000 years old Vedic culture was capable of farming and agriculture, building cities with sanitation, tools and traditions, beauty and cosmetics, administration and taxes, Gods and Kings, Heavens and Sacrifices etc… It is not hard to imagine that this would not have been possible without preliminary language skills, unless of course you believe that our ancestors were mime artists and they used hand-signals. The Harappan dugout has found a number of inscriptions which has lead to the greatest unsolved puzzle of our times, the Indus Script.

I am certainly not the first person to endure this epic journey, there are a number of qualified professionals who have contributed to enrich our understanding of Indus Script. To name a few Dr Asko Parpola, Dr Yuri Knorozov, Iravatham Mahadevan and many more at TIFR & IMS have relentlessly worked on the subject. I am happy to collaborate and present some of the results of what we already know about Indus Script. Common people when confronted with technical details usually give up and don’t get engaged. I recommend that you skip the presentations for now and revisit if you find it necessary.

Indus script

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Markov Chain Model for the Indus Script

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What prompted me to jump in the fray? Well, I accidentally bumped into a heart rending article on a wrapping, while munching peanuts at India Gate, claiming that Indus Script is not a language. It is natural to have difference of opinion on matters of education system even in the modern times. However, Prof Steve Farmer of University of Illinois has taken a rather extreme view and challenged the core belief by his proclamation that Indus Script is nothing but a myth. It is not even a “writing system” and anyone who can provide proof to the contrary can claim $10,000 prize. Well $10K is not much of a reward to go after this challenge wholeheartedly but the satisfaction of fighting for the justice for our mute great grandparents is a worthy and noble cause.

Indians believe that language was first introduced on planet earth by Lord Siva by the powerful sound emanating from His Damru. Unfortunately Panini documented this fact only in the 4th Century BC. We still have a few thousand years unaccounted to satisfy Prof Farmer challenge. There is not much we can do by means of further digging to find additional proofs as to why the students did not keep elaborate notes in classroom during the Harappan times? I can only offer some practical guidance from my personal experience as a student. Our Professor of Marketing Management was an eloquent orator, who did not believe in providing notes before the lectures and did not like being interrupted during. We were learning 4 P’s of marketing, I opened my notebook and started making notes. We were still on the second P and the professor took his usual digression to explain the importance of advertisement; not sure how this was connected with second P, I started drawing doodles on the notebook. I was giving finishing touches to my artwork, just then I hear the mention of fourth P! Startled, I look around, everyone was absorbed in the melody, reluctantly I nudge my fellow student to provide some details on the third P? He wasn’t making any notes as a matter of principle. In his view making notes and learning cannot happen simultaneously. He was not going to be deprived of the 4th P comprehension to help me complete the 3rd P note! The commotion rising from our desk disturbed the symphony of the lecture and I was asked to leave the classroom. Since then additional P’s have been added to the subject and they say that there are up to 22 immutable laws of marketing. As a sales person, till date I rue making notes in the marketing class. This explanation provides sufficient evidence that during the olden days students learned only through verbal instructions and passed it on from generation to generation. It is perhaps the doodle art drawn by handful of distracted students that were found in the Harappa digging. Professor Farmer must have independently come to the same conclusion from his research on the Indus Script and pattern of learning habits of Asian students in his class.

Though the above explanation merits attention but to say that all sales people did in classroom is doodle-art for good thousand years is a bit of stretch. Apparently students of Harappan times kept gentle reminder to help recite lengthy passages. For example, if someone wanted to make speech at the temple before donating 1/16 part of his hard earned crop to God, they will get a tattoo inscribed just outside the temple using the template -. Considering the fact that Indus Script was more of a Sales Tool it will be hard to find repeatable patterns and long texts. There were guidelines for salesmen to not exceed more than 10 characters in a customer presentation tablet and no more than 2 tablets per presentation were allowed. These restrictions forced the language to evolve horizontally. A large number of characters were introduced to memorize different products, value propositions and their selling business models. This style was later adopted by Chinese visitors and there are good 47,000 characters in Kangxi dictionary. The Japanese linguists accidently dropped 37,000 characters in East China Sea, hence they had to manage with just 10,000 characters in the Kanji script. My eastern friends tell me that in modern times, learning only 500 characters is sufficient to get a Bachelor’s degree in Engineering.

I have come up with a basic framework under which a language system can be constructed from the Indus Script. This framework is simple to follow -

a) Every piece of pottery does not need to be deciphered. Hugh McLeod makes a living out of scribbling but can it be made part of an MBA curriculum?
b) The kings and landlords mostly employed accountants to provide subjects with receipts of their heavenly offerings. With no offence to accountants the writing system developed by them was not particularly adopted by scholars in the Vedic times. This is the prime reason why we do not find version of Ramayana or Rosetta Stone engraved in the writings of Indus Valley settlers. Let us stop looking for it.
c) The advertisers were early adopters of the writing system developed by accountants. The advertisers used billboard Tablets in public places to get banner advertisement based on standard CPM model. Seals were adopted for high value CPA and copyright protection.
d) The problem with scientific studies is that it remains within closed community. In my framework we open interpretations to audience poll. Over a period of time sufficient number of people would have participated and using heuristic analysis we settle down our difference of linguistic opinions in a democratic fashion.

Let us put this theory to test right away. We have taken Table 1 for our understanding purpose -

Interactive Interpretations of Indus Tablet 1 -

A. Social Networking Advertisement: The resident of our town, our very own water-boy (Bobby), turns 16 on the 4th week of Autumn in the year of Ox. He is now an eligible bachelor willing to mingle with the society girls for pre-nuptial activities on Social Networking Sites. The bearer of this seal must be granted permission to enter local bar, gambling house and dance hall. This advertisement is brought to you by XII Farm Real Estate Agents who swear full allegiance to the king and our Birdie Kingdom.

B: Universal Cattle ID Project: By the order of our King, all cattle in our heavenly kingdom will now bear the new seal. The seal can be procured from your nearest polling temple by depositing 6.33% earning from dairy products. All the seals issued in the past are invalid from the date mentioned on the new seal. Any cattle found without the new seal will be confiscated and will become the property of Temple Authorities. Government officials should appoint the water-carriers in their county to inspect the cattle by lifting the tail and search for the seal at the appointed location. Any deviation in the seal position or pattern must be immediately reported. The Hologram of our Kingdom and our Sponsors must be painted in Green for copyright protection act. Our kingdom is committed to Green Planet and our patented technology to reduce Methane Emission from the new breed of Farm Animals will be available before the next breeding season.

C: Announcing Sacrifice Ceremony: Water-man has won million rupiah in the national weekly lotto results announced recently. All and sundry are invited to the Sun Temple for a Young Male Bull Sacrifice Ceremony followed by Song and Dance Party organized by the lucky winner.

Any of the these interpretations could be right. We need to put this though the web 2.0 taxonomy test.

Questions View Results

Mad Tea Party revisited

noreply@blogger.com (Lalit Chowdhary) — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 01:49:34 PDT

“Why Google?” said Alice.

“Why not?” said the March Hare.

Alice was silent.

The Dormouse had closed its eyes by this time, and was going off into a doze; but, on being pinched by the Hatter, it woke up again with a little shriek, and went on: “—that begins with an G, such as goodish, and the gremlins, and gravity, —you know you say things are ’Googled’—did you ever see such a thing as a search of a Google?”

“Really, now you ask me,” said Alice, very much confused, “I don’t think—”

“Then you shouldn’t talk,” said the Hatter.

This piece of rudeness was more than Alice could bear: she got up in great disgust, and walked off: the Dormouse fell asleep instantly, and neither of the others took the least notice of her going, though she looked back once or twice, half hoping that they would call after her: the last time she saw them, they were trying to put the Dormouse into the tea-pot.

This was the third time in this month that Alice had woken up from her unfinished mad tea party dream. The trap for the week was laid out. There was much less click-through traffic on her blog. The search engines had perhaps stopped crawling to her website since she had not refilled the AdWord account. LinkedIn teaser statistics of “Who viewed my profile” had dropped by good 50%; she certainly wasn’t paying attention to the benefits of paid LinkedIn account as well. No one had written on her Facebook “wall”, even the gentle reminders to purchase Fertilizer from the Farmsville community had stopped bugging. Besides the daily subscriptions emails Alice has had no contact with the world!

Alice pondered on probable causes and settled for the explanation that the web has constructed an accurate profile of her and her purchasing behaviors. Lately she wasn’t buying anything online; leaving cash in bank for next possible downsizing announcement. An unknown fear gripped Alice, she trusted too much on the second law of thermodynamics. The entropy was rapidly decreasing. If she had a beaker with mixed beans, she could actually see the beans getting organized by color code, as they do in Fforde’s world.

Alice made a quick decision; I will work from office today! The logic behind the decision was perhaps to hide behind corporate firewall. It takes too much energy for entropy to be reversed and only corporations can block the social mapping mafia. Alice was in office after several weeks and she made her first human contact with the IT guy, searching for the yellow cable to plug-in the laptop. The IT guys were busy segregating Employee Google Trends reports. She was not the type who pays attention to the IT bulletins, apparently last month Google’s Enterprise division had signed “paid” search for employees. The way it worked for corporation was its tall claim of drop 50% of internet bandwidth requirement. The employees are provided with the weekly search trends and consumption of internet content. Anything above allotted threshold is deducted from variable compensation. Google takes whatever makes the cut and the corporation saves bandwidth.

So it wasn’t a dream after all. What happened to the Dormouse?

Youngistaan ka Bow-Wow!!

noreply@blogger.com (Lalit Chowdhary) — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 09:22:21 PDT

Prince of PepsiCo

I am reporting this Live from the dark dungeons of Youngistaan. Ranbir is on a mission to rescue the Princess from the clutches of er, umm, let me get back to you, on the name of the cyber villain. There is confusion as who will Ranbir accept as his princess. Our sources say that Deepika is out. Let us wait for an official confirmation on the cause of split-second change by the Ad Agency. They have roped in a newcomer Ms Jacqueline Fernandes, keeping the demands of the script in mind. Speaking of which, we have also demanded for a script for the game. Miss Jacq cannot take that grin off her face, this abduction story is not going to hold. What is Sanju Baba mumbling, I cannot hear a word of all this, why do they always put me on the last row? Back to the studio, will finish this post before Ranbir enters the ~~second~~ third phase of the contest.

PEPSI YOUNGISTAN KA WOW Unique Game On

I am sure, by wow, you are familiar with the concept. This is an interactive game. Correction, all games are interactive. (I hate interactive audience interruptions.) What I mean to say is that this is an interactive advertisement and there is big reward for participation. If you wish to know more about the campaign please go through this 22 slides PowerPoint presentation.

PEPSI YOUNGISTAN CAMPAIGN

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There are two types of people in this world, the minority who know the answer and the rest who respond to the contest. The chance of winning in this situation is like finding life on another planetary system. Hypothetically one can win, but the main purpose why the advertiser is parting with mullah is to measure ROI. The advertiser has two major ROI goals from this campaign, to measure (i) reach and (ii) messaging. As far as I can tell the campaign is not doing well on both the accounts. It is my estimate that 80% of responses are coming from 2% of users. We need to apply spam filters to block all the bulk SMS messages like “Noida Flats for sale”. The problem with spam filters is that it is also blocking the all ad-sponsored free SMS websites used predominantly by Youngistaan. On the second goal let us closely look at the three choices of the first question (a) WOW (b) NOW and (c) HOW. A friend of mine once told me that “never take a chance in a chance game. Send three SMS with each option.” This explains the probability distribution of valid answers, (a) 34%, (b) & (c) 33%. Pepsi management is not pleased with the marketing team, they has been asked to write a 1200 words essay to explain the dismal failure of their WOW messaging not reaching the masses. In my view the messaging is not as bad as that of recent Musli power advertisement, I had to since switchover to Kellogg's Corn Flakes with Extra Iron!

Ranbir is now in second level and it confronted by multitudes of Vindu in a micro-Raktabeez Avatar. It is difficult to bear Vindu in a single copy. So let me give you a hint, the answer is (c). Let us get the hell out of this level in a rush, before Vindu gets emotional and start using beep language.

Game Master Challenge: Skeletons in the Closet

In the third round the Game Master puts an interesting twist. The endgame has three possible outcomes.

(a) Jacq turns into a witch due to overdose of *oke

(b) Ranbir and Jafar (can someone please help me with the right name of Sanju's character?) find dostana for each other

(c) They lived happily ever after kind of boring ending.

Need audience poll to get to the bottom of this puzzle game.

Get This - Survey Results - GlowDay.com

Chiggy Wiggy with Hindi Poetry

noreply@blogger.com (Lalit Chowdhary) — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 11:34:15 PDT

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(Note to click through visitors: If you are looking for meaning of "chiggy wiggy" please refer to Yahoo Answers page)

A growing number of bloggers are taking to Hindi poetry. I have personally reviewed many on Indiblogger and reached the conclusion that this subject is of utmost importance to the community and it is time to provide a short discourse on appreciating Hindi poetry.

Hindi Poetry can be divided into three periods: Devotional (भक्ति काल), Shadow-ism (छायावाद) and Current Commercial (चित्रपट युग). Devotional period was when first time double meaning sentences were introduced in literature. These were expressed meaning (शब्दार्थ) and read between line meaning (भावार्थ.) The poet's objective was to point out ironies of life through short verses without causing controversy or protests from the members of conservative party. There is abundant mention of pottery in the poetry which is an indication of fragility of life, lack of public healthcare and practice of faith healing during this period. The poetry also suggests lack of trade of ceramic, dairy and clothing products with neighboring states and total dependency on local industry to meet the demands. This information could have been of interest to the less argumentative western economists if it was supported with labor rates and unemployment data for the period.

The next period shadow-ism (छायावाद) is the most complex period of Hindi Poetry. If you are taking Class X Board Examinations and preparing for Hindi, having to choose between “Jaishankar Prasad” and “Mahadevi Verma”, without offending your loved ones could keep you in the state of indefinite indecisiveness. Mahadevi Verma wrote the verse “तुझको पीड़ा में ढूंढूंगी, तुझमें ढूंढूंगी पीड़ा” (loose translation: search you in pain, search pain in you) to express this multiple choices syndrome from her own experiences of learning shadow-ism. The problem with shadow-ism its deceitful simplicity. Take the case of Kamayani (कामायनी) by Jaishankar Prasad; there are no long-twisted words, the flow and rhythm are tuned to perfection in the following lines -

नीचे जल था ऊपर हिम था,

एक तरल था एक सघन,

एक तत्त्व की ही प्रधानता- कहो उसे जड़ या चेतन।
(Water below, ice on top
One fluid and the other solid
What can one say about the property of this element - dead or alive)

Don’t fall for it; three generations of Hindi Professors having chosen Kamayani their PhD thesis topic have failed to analyze it. The difficulty of expressing love in Shadow-ism was a void filled effectively by Urdu Shayari instead. In my view, one life is not sufficient to fully comprehend Mr Prasad’s work. It will be grave injustice to other poets and not seek for seven reincarnations in Banaras before moving on to other forms of life. In spite of heavy publicity by CBSE and other State Boards to revive Shadow-ism this style is now well preserved in the archives of university libraries, with no prospect of making a comeback.

The devotional poets in reflected on the simple lives of peasants by daily nitpicking to find new followers or un-follow competing poets (this can be tricky without the help of Twitter!) The poetry abide by certain rules of rhythm and rhyme (‘meter’ as the music masterji would call it) so that it could be sung in public, if an occasion presented itself. An example of such a poetry will be “ओ पालनहारे, निर्गुण और न्यारे” from the movie Lagaan composed by AR Rahman and lyrics by Javed Akhtar.

In contrast the shadow-ism style of is written as prose to exasperate musicians to fit it into any structured musical composition. I know you will not be satisfied without an example. The closest, I could think of is again a song by Javed Akhtar “एक लड़की को देखा तो ऐसा लगा” written for the movie 1942 A Love Story. They had to call RD Burman from self-imposed oblivion to compose the music for this song. In the end it would not have mattered if it was done without any musical accompaniment. All RD Burman did was that he pressed one random note on the harmonium and stayed within the vicinity of the note, till Mr Kumar Sanu was done reading the prose.

So far one must admit that our brushes with Hindi poetry have been accident free. Year later when I reflect on our school education, our teachers’ attitude towards professional lyricists is not very encouraging. They say poetry is an art, it should come from your heart and how can bollywood lyricist be even compared with poets when we know that they sell their art. If you recollect most of the lyricist in the seventies were writing songs on Life (ज़िन्दगी), often with contrasting extreme views developed under the philosophical influence of Osho or Krishnamurti. I was unable to appreciate that ‘search for meaning of life without bank balance’ and ‘looking for a paid job as assistant to Anand Bakshi or Majrooh Sultanpuri’ were two different things. Gopaldas Neeraj was perhaps the only crossover poet and as for the rest of the poets in Neeraj’s own words, “कारवां गुज़र गया, गुबार देखते रहे!”

Since many of the poets opted out of Commercial Poetry (चित्रपट गीत), there were only a handful of dependable lyricists in the industry. Take the example of Mr Tyrewala who contributed to the monumental disaster of a song “Chiggy Wiggy” for the movie Blue. Even the million dollar contract with Kylie Minogue and the Oscars of AR Rahman could not bring out the poetic fusion. A fair copyright ownership act could have saved the blues. With no disrespect to Mr Tyrewala, Chiggy-Wiggy is a song of hope for several aspiring poets who want to make it big in the music industry. It is quite apparant that opportunities in this space are poised for growth. In fact one can consider opening a call center in Goregaon for the composers to call anytime of the day and get their poetries answered.

My personal favorite lyricist is Mr Prasoon Joshi who routinely pours undiluted H₂SO₄ in his songs, to strengthen his long standing bond with his science teachers at Almora. The idea is not to open a debate between science and literature or show personal favoritism in an objective blog, let us look at some of the other seasoned lyricists. If we had to choose between Javed Akhtar and Gulzar we will be faced with the “Mahadevi Verma Syndrome” discussed moments ago. I take your permission to review the works of Gulzar since we have already seen the versatility of Javed sahib.

Gulzar is master of metaphors and figuratively speaking his poetry, like old wine, is getting better with the age. Gulzar’s main challenge is to find the right composers. Usually composers sit next to the lyricist when completing a song. However in case of Gulzar, they fit the words in a given composition without any consideration or poetic justice. His hallmark style of song writing connects with the story and composition at a level of abstraction which requires detailed study in Hindi, Punjabi, Urdu, Sufi and Rumi literature. Most composers do not have time or patience for all that. Take the example of the opening song “छैय्या-छैय्या” of the movie Dil Se. First you need to look beyond the Khan trio (Farah, Malaika, and SRK) swinging on the top of a moving Train in their own version of Sufi ecstasy. Then you need to analyze why Mr AR Rahman is riding on a speed boat in a Mystic River. Talented Santosh Sivan produces the necessary scenic distractions and the high pitched debutant voice of Sukhvinder Singh does his part in completing the total destruction of an excellent poem. The rest of the movie and its characters try their best to align with the harmonic interpretations of the song in an effort to make-up for the errors! Ironically, people rejected the movie but immortalized the song. The age old debate on the need of good poetry in film songs was wide open. In fact Anand Bakshi was of the opinion that it was a blessing that Mr Rahman did not understand Hindi/Urdu Poetry. (Quiz Question: Translate the line “गुलपोश कभी इतराए कहीं” written by Gulzar.)

Gulzar teamed with Shankar, Ehsaan and Loy to create history with the song “कजरारे” for the movie, Bunty Aur Babli. The subtle use of English word in the line “आँखें भी कमाल करती हैं, personal से सवाल करती हैं” doesn't need formal translation. However the one I liked best is the song “धड़क-धड़क” from the same movie. Remember the verses – “चाँद का टीका मत्थे लगा के, रात-दिन तारों में जीना-वीना easy नहीं” or “ओ जरा रास्ता तो दो, थोडा सा बदल चखना हैं। बड़ा-बड़ा कोयल से, नाम फलक पे लिखना हैं।” It not only does justice to the story but uses the correct Train Template to depict the flow of song. Gulzar sahib has penned many magic moments for the silver screen teaming with composers like Burmans’, Vishal Bhardwaj, AR Rahman, etc. each time surpassing his previous work.

My lesson on poetry will present the youth with several new and exciting career choices. Cross translation of Hindi and Regional language songs in English and other languages is a serious business as our film industry is going global and becoming collaborative. Translation is still a nascent art form and it requires deep understanding of language, poetry, culture and the movie context. There are several examples of incorrect translations making round on the Youtube, that mocks of our poetry, culture and regional language sensitivity. It is a shame that we are leaving this market opportunity unattended.

It will be unfair if I did not mention some of the bloggers who have been tirelessly pouring their hearts out. Sushri Seema Gupta and Sushri Ranju Bhatia contribute regularly on their blogs. All the poems on the Kaavyaalaya website are worth reading. I would have concluded with a couplet but I am afraid that critics review may hurt the feelings of my fans.

Time Warped in a Flat World

noreply@blogger.com (Lalit Chowdhary) — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 03:58:43 PDT

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There has been significant erosion of voice call revenue for telecom operators and with the proliferation of smart phones and increased penetration of wireless data services (WiFi, 3G or LTE), it is unlikely that voice services ever will make a comeback. What can the telecom operators do?

Telecom bridges three gaps (a) Space, (b) Time and (c) Information. Telecom Operator's have focused on "Distance" and Web-services have focused on bridging the "Information" gap. The focus on Time has been more for instant access and faster response. Let us consider a few examples of services to understand the importance of Time (restricted the discussion to voice calls only) -

(a) Enterprise Services – Call centers provide enterprise communication services like IVR, Customer Care and Telemarketing. Most of the call-centers purchase talk time in bulk and sell value-added services to enterprise which are several factors of magnitude higher. In most of the cases the services provided by call centers results in saving. A bank can save its office cost by providing Tele-banking service and the customer can save a trip to bank.

The problem occurs when call centers are used for Toll-free customer care support and Tele-marketing of products and services. The call is Toll-free for the calling party and the support person is usually paid for the “on-call” time.Toll-free customer care services are often not geared to provide detailed technical support which results in significant customer dissatisfaction. There is perhaps room for providing paid expert technical call service on the similar lines 1-900 services. Tele-marketers are the real problem and the National Do Not Call Registry (NDNC Registry) is perhaps not as effective.

(b) Pervasive Access - The personal or private time of individuals has been taken over by telephonic interrupts. People travel long distances to meet someone and find that their face to face meetings are interrupted by telephone calls. Nothing can be more frustrating when taking appointments, scheduling conference calls and blocking calendars are no deterrent to people taking calls. Why meetings even lunch breaks, movies, hair saloon visits are all interrupted by phone calls. If time is money whose is paying for stealing time? People talk to family during office hours and take work related calls from home. It is my estimate that productivity of individuals due to unplanned calls has come down by at least 20%. In any given meeting at least 2 people go out of the meeting to take phone calls. Everyone in meeting is interrupted by emails, text messages and everyone is multi-tasking. This is evident by rise in problems of work-life balance.

Let me kick in my theory here "talk time is cheap but the time to talk is not!" Let me suggest building a new billing system around call completion which could somehow resolve these issues, I could call it bid2talk. This system will be based on “user status” and “user-network”. The “user-status” is the Presence status set by user that determines next course of action for the call. The “user-network” are set of phone numbers in user’s social circle, all the numbers outside of user’s network are treated differently. The called-party and calling-party will go through a short negotiation process which will determine the call value. The telecom operator keeps a small percent of the additional revenue.

1. A doctor can provide consultation to patients on the phone and can get paid by using this service. Driving direction can be provided on phone. Host of services can be enabled that allows people with specialized skills to make money for their “Talk-time”.

2. Tele-marketer can share part of the call charges with the called party.

3. The presence status decides the billing rate. If you are in office and decide to take personal calls or call outside your circle, your phone bill will go up. Likewise if you get work calls during personal time, you make extra money.

4. Celebrities can put up themselves available for fan-call for a fee determined by talk-time auction system.

This requires standardizations efforts, inter-operator agreements and massive integration with location, presence and payment platforms. Not so, IMS standard provides all the system requirement to meet these requirements. If the operators are willing to deploy these open systems, independent application developers can help in building the ecosystem.

Pushing Classic Liberalism on the Unsolicited Web

noreply@blogger.com (Lalit Chowdhary) — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 21:12:45 PST

Unfortunately many proponents of Classic Liberalism are not alive to be part of social networking revolution to see their ideals of liberty of individuals including freedom of religion, speech, press and free markets in action on the Internet. In absence of visionaries most of us while away our time on the net discussing fashion trends and driving directions. My own awareness level on alternative medicine, diet programs, tiger population, etc have reached several notches higher than needed for survival.

Web has been struggling with Push and Pull technologies (content) since last 20 years with no clear consensus on best approach. In the early stages of Web, shy guys were dependent on newsgroups (usenet) to spread radical philosophical opinions on religion, art and music using e-mail aliases. It served no useful purpose except to kill time in between projects. Most of the healthy human beings could not participate in these virtual debates due to lack of affordable email services and fear of reprimand for using employer provided email-id. Web-based Free Email services were born out the necessity for active participation in matters of urgent concern on the newsgroups. In spite of its early success, inability to monetize email services lead to spam invasion in the personal space. The spammers were first generation web marketers who were willing to risk losing million customers forever in return of one legitimate buyer. Protecting email id from the web jockeys became the full time occupation of email service providers. Email as a Push content service was non-happening.

Out of the rubble of first generation web-services created by the early stage big-bang or big-burst (depending on which side you landed), Google rose to the occasion and created web order. It played the role of navigating a prospective buyer to a seller, but charging only the willing sellers. It conferred ultimate joy of discovery to the surfing Christopher Columbus-es without the fear of being discovered in the act. Internet surfing aided by search engines was more addictive than meaningless TV channel switching. Google, Wikipedia, Amazon etc. created a perfect Web2.0 world as we like to call it now. Here sending unsolicited information is considered impolite and “don’t talk to strangers” is a good advice.

Objectivism argues that reality exists independent of consciousness. Objectivism on Internet gained ground with the onset of Web2.0 and folks started developing widgets, open-api’s and plug-ins for personalized web services as the next logical destination. Ms Ayn Rand must have underestimated the flows in human behavior when she proposed this insightful theory on rational human behavior. While Google services in its purity are admired and consumed; iGoogle was an imposition of perfection on insecure browsing beings. People needed recommendation, endorsement, encouragement, motivation, comments, stars, etc on a daily basis which cannot be fulfilled by an objective reality tailored do-it-yourself page-ranking system. Objectivism failed to add value to the Pull service!

Social Networking on the other hand fills in the attention deficiency created by Pull Services by focusing on human interaction with a dash of group therapy without the algorithmic interventions. Push services make a comeback for one more reason, i.e. rise of Mobile Internet. Pushing right content on the small screens is perhaps the best way to circumvent the inconvenience of browsing. What was needed on mobile was simplicity in small size; you know where this is leading to? You guessed it, Twitter is the right answer!

It is hard to tell what future has in store for Twitter but I certainly dare to make some predictions here. First I would like to give credit to @alexrudloff who created great real-time twitter statistics website which is the source of data collection.

1. The followers are people like you and me with discretionary power to follow random users with absolute no objection on being followed. In a perfect world number of followers and friends will fit in a bell curve of Gaussian distribution. How do you explain the minority top 1000 users with 100,000+ followers with little or no friends of their own? Consider yourself “arrived” on Twitter if you got followers in 4-digits. Even forvthe most influential users the "distribution of followers" is better explained by the long-tail model (@TEDchris). This clearly explains that most of the Twitter users (including me) are mostly clueless as what is going on here.

2. Sysomos reported in July 2009 the “The more followers, the more you Tweet”. Please don’t take these findings to your heart, it was back in July 09 and things were hazy back in ice-ages. The current situation is that anything more than 10 tweets per day chances are that one can lose most of the followers. Folks like @GuyKawasaki and @ParisHilton are exceptional they can tweet 24X7 at prolific rate and still keep their followers but it doesn’t work for everyone. This is bad news for spam. The traditional technique of spammers becoming a follower and expecting a return favor will not work. We expect you to throw the leech out of your "following" list as soon as you spot one, if you don't Telco's SMS fair use policy will. Twitter has a self-imposed check on the proliferation of spammers and internet-marketers.

3. The “total updates” (updates multiplied by followers) does not follow the long tail model for the top 1000 users. Let me take that back, when the number of followers drop from 1E+6 to 1E+5 the “total updates” drop from 1E+8 to 1E+7, same order but 100 times less in percent drop. If the Advertisement revenue was to be distributed based on some CPM/CPA formula, the top slots are all taken by the big fish. A large number of traditional media are already on the Twitter Top following list and they can finally get to keep the Advertisement revenue. For me, Twitter is a human intelligence driven Recommendation Engine. Tired of finding interesting stuff on the Internet; just follow a trusted friend.

Google whose primary focus is “Discovery” and "Pull" has reasons to worry. Their entry into URL shortening service and Search for Twitter appears to be short-term patchwork strategy. Thanks for rise of social networking Push services seem to be winning for now. An ardent Kant follower would have said “I told you so”. Not so fast buddy, show me the evidence with reference to the highest aims of life, directed to moral interests only on Social Networking websites.

A Birdie Eye View

noreply@blogger.com (Lalit Chowdhary) — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 20:23:59 PST

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There are four Golf Courses in Gurgaon, more than 600 acres of Greens. This may not be a topic of discussion for majority of residents but I wish to draw your attention to this rather neglected sport. Golfing in India shot into prominence since 1970 when Government of India officially banned hunting. Many a hunters switched to Golfing as a respectful substitute that involved aiming, shooting and collecting trophies.

Haryana Government’s annual spent on sports was less than $1 M in 2008 but they produced 1.5 medalists in the Beijing Olympics. Wrestling champion Sushil Kumar lives not just across the street in Delhi but he gets all his provisions except water from Haryana. Second only to Kenya, Haryana has most efficient utilization of public funds in sports. In contrast when we consider golf, with its massive investment in golf infrastructure, the sport has not lived up to the high standards set by the state. Miffed at these findings the State Government of Haryana levied 25% entertainment tax on golf. News like this should have led to international protest at World Economic Forum but not as much as a formal letter from IGF to reconsider the decision was sent to India.

Many of the sponsors of the golf, I have spoken to are deeply disturbed by the turn of events for golf in fiscal year 2009-10. Golf was worst hit by Global Recession, stated here merely as a fact and not to gain readers’ sympathy. Right when things had started to look up on the economy side, golfing world was struck by yet another tragedy caused by one of its greatest ambassador. Now try explaining to your CFO that golf is a sport and not entertainment! Two audit firms appointed by corporate finance and commissioner of tax have independently recommended not granting sports status to Golf until it gets included in 2016 Olympics. A traditional marketing approach to such temporary setbacks is to initiate Golf Appreciation Academy for Finance Professionals/Future CFO’s/Accounting Firms and hope for the best. In hard times hope has diminishing conviction.

There is no time to grief, extraordinary times call for radical approaches. For the very first time in the golfing history certain sales executives were hired to boost the golf membership numbers. Combo offers of golf with Kitty Parties, Yoga and Nature Walk were presented to prospective clients. Major credit cards offered golf to their exclusive Platinum membership with flimsy entry criterion. If this was to continue unabated there will soon be golf deals at retail store near you! Purely from a marketing and branding perspective one may not agree with the Sales approach, but it is hard to ignore the effectiveness of these programs. There are many unbelievable stories in golfing circles romanticizing the sport; most famous one of course was the hole-in-one offer from BMW.

I am sure you are still wondering what it has got to do with you. Your loyalty to Cricket is not up for sale. The only sporting activity to your credit is the automatic morning jogger. You may not be a Golf aficionado but you belong to an aspiration generation caught in the juggernaut of India growth story. Your ability to scale Gurgaon’s shining buildings is unmatched. The glass ceiling that one hits on their way up can easily be overcome by golf. As you stand alone contemplating in your corner office, the only sport that reciprocates back with same loneliness is Golf. You don’t choose golf, Golf chooses you!

Picture Credit

It is never too late to learn Golf as long as you have the right wardrobe to go with it. Jeans are forbidden and round neck t-shirts can cause a mini riot at the course. If you try to smuggle a golfing-set bought at Father’s Day sale from Hong Kong chances are that you will barred from at least 3 Golf Courses in Gurgaon. Though I get no commission in promoting these brands but you cannot go wrong with Callaway, Ping or TaylorMade. The object of the game is to whack a tiny ball and have fun finding it on the course; eventually the ball gets exhausted and runs down the nearest hole. To the beginners golf may appear to be a game of chance however with some practice at calculating weighted averages a handicap is assigned by the authorities. Handicap allows beginners to mingle with scratch golfers without loss of self-esteem. If the Olympics committee adopts golf handicap system for other sports the medals tally will be reflective of Population, GDP and Bilateral Trade. USA could get out of its massive budget deficit simply by allowing other countries to square it off with some medals in return.

When God created humans he deliberately hid a perfect golf swing in the body. The purpose of every golfer is to search for that perfect swing. There are so many external factors to enhance the swing like the number of dimples on the ball, the size of the iron, direction of the wind, the dew on the grass, etc. but if the swing is too shy to come out, it can ruin a perfect weekend. Golf is a discussion game, give a golf club to a recluse and he will be a gregarious chirping bird. It is for this property Golf is effectively used by business to negotiate difficult deals. I could suggest to Times of India to include Golf in season 2 of Aman ki Aasha, it may just turn out to be better a diplomacy tool than Sufi Music.