sai sundar's thoughtworks

Put more wood on fewer arrows

2012-01-11T09:18:00.000-08:00

This theme of keeping it simple sweetheart; simplicity is the new complex etc has been around for a while but no one, no one - took this as far as Steve Jobs did with his products. Sir Walter Issacson in his biography on Steve Jobs mentions that Steve wanted to give back and was mentoring both Mark & Larry Page. I'm yet to see Facebook implement any Simplistic designs, but I was pleased today to see this write up on Google streamlining and getting back to start up mode.

Here are some key steps that google took --

Meaning full meetings - Every decision-oriented meeting should have a clear decision-maker, and if it didn't, the meeting shouldn’t happen
Bullpens aren’t Just for Pitchers - It’s amazing how fast things can get done – even in a large company – when you put so many key people together and don’t give them an agenda.
Use OKRs to Unify - Team by team, the leaders lay out their (Objectives and Key Results) and how they’ll measure success. Afterwards, they’re posted for anyone within the company to see.
Buck stops here - streamline the decision-making process. To do this, they adopted a ‘buck stops here’ approach that has been very effective
Make tough calls – closed more than half their products or Larry Page says, to “put more wood behind fewer arrows.” There are no companies that make good slow decisions.

With the takeaways above and its move to close a bunch of high profile products, im once again excited by this shop.

Read the entire article --

http://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/quarterly/speed/start-up-speed-kristen-gil.html

Best Books to Read on Personal Development

2011-07-05T22:47:00.000-07:00

Best Books to Read on Personal Development: "

What are the best books to read on personal development, business, leadership, management, etc.?

How To Find the Best Books to Read
That’s a tough question to answer because it’s about context, relevancy, and your particular situation. That said, maybe a better question is, how do you figure out the best books to read? The approach I've used is three-fold:

I've spent a few hundred dollars on books each month and I test them at Microsoft in terms of leading teams, driving results, personal growth, building leadership skills, improving time management, etc. (My pain can be your gain.)
I've asked the most effective people I know, which books have changed their life or in some way helped them build skills or mental models and strategies to get results. (This has been the most surprising and effective way that I find the books to read that help the most.)
I've focused on solving relevant and real-world problems, using both with timeless truths, and new books with emerging practices. I’ve found that the value of a book is the value of the problem solved.

It's been many years, blood, sweat, and tears, of cultivating a library of the world's best insight and action for work and life. It's all part of the path. Part of my staying power is that it's a labor of love -- I have a passion for reading, and long ago, I learned to embrace continuous learning as a success strategy for life.

One thing I do need to say is that while it might seem like a long and winding road, books have always been my short-cut. They are self-paced and, as a fast reader, I can learn the information and apply it very quickly to get results.

Best Books to Read
Here are some of my collections of best books to read:

Hopefully, this can help you find the books you've been looking for, or at least help you find new and interesting books to read that might help you in ways you didn’t expect. Hopefully, this also saves you a lot of time on your journey by providing a "book map" of useful books organized by key categories.

The landscape is always changing, so I'm always interested in hearing about books that I should read.

19 best social media practises

2011-01-26T21:57:00.001-08:00

Zeitgeist 2010

2010-12-16T08:25:00.000-08:00

Apple - Marketing Machine

2010-11-15T08:17:00.000-08:00

Ahaa - most companies have a page not available, fail whale, but Apple doesn't lose a single opportunity to build expectations and marketing hype.

Google's Shopping Cart

2010-08-26T11:22:00.000-07:00

This is a very interesting post that shows the vast appetite that Google has for startups and other companies.

It will be interesting to do a ROI study on how much was paid for these, how many of these have actually generated any revenue. Besides the fact that most of these acquisitions are more a resource/talent acquisition, the number of lost opportunities (folks leaving google to form other startups) I think is higher than the number of opportunities

Maybe google should focus on nurturing a better startup culture in house and give these talented engineers the freedom to run their startup like a startup. The combination of big bucks and great talent should bring in more successful products in house.

Research by Scores.org

Food Consumption in America

2010-07-31T10:15:00.001-07:00

Keeping up with my Uber Fascination for Infographics, this one is very well done.

http://www.visualeconomics.com/food-consumption-in-america_2010-07-12/

Stop Drinking bottled Water NOW

2010-07-27T22:27:00.000-07:00

The Infographic speaks for itself.

Via: Term Life Insurance

How to use Twitter as a Marketing Weapon

2010-05-10T20:37:00.000-07:00

At the Social Media Summit - Guy Kawasaki gave an excellent keynote session on "How to use Twitter as a Marketing Weapon.". As usual his energy levels were awesome and I loved his energy and his oft used "Life is good". Here are some of my notes from the session.

Step 1 :

Use Twitter to MONITOR your brand.

search to see how people are mentioning your brand.
use 'OR' search for your brand and your competitor (e.g Canon OR Nikon OR Kodak)
search what is your competition saying about you and what you are saying about your compettion using from or to @nikonusa

Step 2:

Use Twitter to ENGAGE your followers or customers.

Example of Virgin airways cited.

Step 3:

Use Twitter to SELL.

Examples of @delloutlet and @kogibbq cited

your revenue does not increase proportional to your number of followers.
Dell had 25k followers and did $0.5 million sale, when their followers reached 1.6 m followers they did $1.5 million sale
Twitter is the best way to do instant promotion without increased overhead cost.

Step 4:

Use Twitter to SUPPORT your customers.

Example of @comcastcares cited.

Step 5:
Use Twitter to Prospecting

Use Advanced search features in twitter to locate people who are interested in your service or your product. E.g, you can look for people interested in photography if you are a camera store.

TWITTER TIPS

Twitter works best if you have a lot of followers.

To get a lot of followers you need to have great content.
alltop/stumbleupon/smart brief are some recommended sites.
Check out www.twitter.com/cleveraccounts

TOOLS RECOMMENED

Objective marketer

allows you to create campaigns on facebook and twitter
analytics - click through rate
repeat tweets works. hey, it works for CNN

twitter feed - blog post into twitter

twit hack - search and reply

tweetmeme - should be added to all blogs for ease of retweeting.

Retweet is the best form of flattery

For the complete script go here

http://holykaw.alltop.com/twitter-as-a-weapon-demo-script

Welcome to the World of Socialnomics

2010-05-07T13:39:00.000-07:00

If you need some cool Social Media facts and figures, check out this video below.

You will be amazed !

I don't want to but I need to ?

2010-04-07T20:39:00.000-07:00

A beautiful day in the city, I went for a small walk after lunch, the heart really didnt want to get back to work but the brain said that you need to. So finally i made my way back to work and then sat down to think about this exact statment " I don't want to but I need to". Im sure a lot of you have had this feeling at somepoint for something at somestage at your life.

Thinking about it a little more, a few things become clear between the different between Needs and Wants.
Needs are something that your brain tells you that is required, while wants are something that your heart desires. Lets look at some examples.

Person A says:
I need to pay my bill.
I need to go to work.
I need to excercise regularly.
I need to work on my projects.

Person B says:
I want to pay my bill.
I want to go to work.
I want to excercise regularly.
I want to work on my projects.

Who do you think will enjoy their life more? Who do you think will live life more ? Who do you think will work better at work? The answer is Person B.

Person B will have more positive outlook on life, Person B seems to like what they are doing and seems to want to do it more. If you want to move from being Person A to Person B here are two simple things to try:

Work on your goals.
The trick lies in figuring out what you want to do and taking time out to do that. If you follow your goals and dreams, you will be doing more of what you want to do and all the needs will take care of themselves.

Positive Reinforcement
If you see yourself being sorrounded by needs to do. keep telling yourself that this is what i want to do and do a good job at that. The needs might slowly turn into wants if you take the pressure out and enjoy doing it more.

Any other tricks you can suggest?

IPL on Youtube = Fail

2010-03-12T07:24:00.000-08:00

As some of you would be aware that the who's who of International Cricket are descending in India for the new season of IPL. IPL season 3 starts today and one of its big bold moves was to showcase all 60 matches on YouTube. A big win for the Online Media giant you would think.

WATBlog captured some of the advertising moment of IPL on YouTube, with the Clincher being a front page ad on one of India's Largest NewsPaper Times of India. The rumors of close to $4 million USD worth of advertising revenue has been generated by placing sponsors on the YouTube Page.

With this kinda of advertising you would think the Brins and Pages of the world at Google would be prepared for the Traffic that hit the site this morning when the first match was getting ready to be played. Apparently not, the site is experiencing TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES, which is moron speech for WE ARE NOT READY - FAIL.

Also, Live streaming is not Available for US viewers interesting. In order to ensure that Dishnet gets to sell is $150 package for the games, Youtube in US is not showing the games live. - ANOTHER FAIL. For a giant like IPL that is making revenue upwards of $200 million, a couple million lost from Dishnet wouldn't dent its coffers.

Sad - Time for a Lalit Modit Whale image.

Ten Commandments of Documenting

2010-02-24T19:19:00.000-08:00

I write and review documents for a living. Over the hundreds of documents that I have seen and read there are a few things that drive me mad and that are a simple fix. If you want your documenting to be good or even great, these are some of things that you should follow

The Ten Commandments of Documentation

Page Numbers - my document will have page numbers of every page.
Revision History - my document will have a clean and clear revision history which will include a brief summary of the change made and the date the change was made.
Versioning - my document will have a version number that will match the revision history and revision date.
Header - my document will have a header that will clearly state the title of the document, the version number and the date the document was published.
References - my document will have references clearly marked
Fonts and Style - my document will be consitent with the use of styles provided by word and will ensure that the Font is consistent.
Table of Contents - my document will have table of contents that will have links that will be hot links - links into the document. The reader can click on the link from the TOC and be taken to the correct place in the document
Labels - my document will have clear labels for all the figures, tables and charts included in the document. There will be no orphans.
Reference and Glossary - my document will have a section that lists all the references and a glossary for new terms and abbreviations used.
Content- my document will have content that is not stated multiple times, is easy to understand and has been organized in a simple easy to read fashion.

Superbowl Party - What you need to know !

2010-02-07T10:30:00.000-08:00

Who is playing?

New Orlean Saints led by Drew Breeze is tee'd up against Indianapolis Colts led by Peyton Manning. Peyton Manning is a New Orlean local and his dad (Archie Manning) played 12 long seasons with the Saints. Archie Manning is ofcourse supporting his son, cause, Well blood is thicker than Gumbo. The Saints are the underdogs and most of the country is rooting for them after what the city of New Orleans have gone through. The opening of the Superdome which was a recovery area during the Katrina still gives goose bumps to many who watched it on TV and watched it live. While arguably Peyton Manning is a living QB legend and might be one of the greatest to have even played.

10 fun facts about Superbowls

100 million - expected to tune into watch the game, continuing making the superbowl the most watched Television broadcast. Still behind the finale of M-A-S-H that drew in a record 106 million viewers.
700,000 footballs are produced annually for official NFL use &
72 of them are used for the Super Bowl.
35% of people who attend the game write it off as a corporate expense.
20% antacid sales increase on the monday after.
17 average number of people at a Super Bowl party
6% of Americans call in sick the Monday after Super Bowl.
5% of Americans will watch the game alone.
2nd largest day for food consumption after thanksgiving.
1st superbowl solo artist to perform superbowl halftime was Michael Jackson in 1993.

Advertisement

Budweiser has been the exclusive Super Bowl beer advertiser for the past 13 years. Which leads to this, More drivers are involved in alcohol-related accidents on Super Bowl Sunday than any other day of the year (except St. Patrick's Day), according to the Insurance Information Institute. So please don't drink and drive.

Thanks to Janet Jackson nipplegate, all halftime shows now have a 5 sec tape delay.

30 sec ad spot is costing $2.8 MDD this year compared to $3 mill last year.
51 % estimated to tune into to watch the ads.
23 years - First time in 23 years no Pepsi commercial

The top five ads as chosen by the USA Today Super Bowl 2009, Ad Meter were:

Doritos' fan-made ad about "free Doritos" being seen in a "crystal ball", with different results for two co-workers. Joseph and Dave Herbert from Batesville, Indiana, creators of the ad, won US $1,000,000;
Budweiser's Clydesdale love affair with a dancing horse;
Another Budweiser ad seeing another Clydesdale playing fetch showing off after the beer wagon's Dalmatian fetches a small stick;
A Bridgestone ad with Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head driving in a toy car on a twisty road;
Another Doritos ad that shows the power of crunch with a woman being stripped down to her underwear, free money from an ATM and a policeman being turned into a monkey.

All the above stats will make you look good for your superbowl party and monday mornign cooler talk. Finally, with the oscars around the corner, check this video out of if Superbowl was directed by these famous Directors.

Have fun guys. Saints (who dat) and Colts. Bring it on fellas !

Post Mortem Goals - one month after !

2010-01-31T14:22:00.000-08:00

Every year in January the gym is totally crowded, not a treadmill to run on without waiting for 20 mins. Come Valentines day, it is a different story. Why is that the case? Why do we as human beings set Goals every new year (without fail) and then do keep up with the goals but go back next year and set in most cases, the same goals all over again.

Baffling isn't it. The reason we set goals year after year is HOPE (not wanting to sound like POTUS). We hope that the stars will line up, the planets will move in our direction and we will stick to our goals. I made some notes on how to break this habit and did some research. Here is a step by step on making a better attempt at Goals.

Step 1- Set the Right Goals

What are most goals geared towards? Most of the goals can be easily broken down into Personal (weight loss, stress reduction), Professional (Career, School, Jobs), Family (home, kids, vacation), Finance (retirement, pension, savings) and Spiritual goals (church activities, social work).

The problem with most goals is that they are written to make it sound more as a habit change, but not really a goal. For example, Get in shape is not a goal, while Losing 20 pounds is a better Goal. A goal should be : SMART

S - specific, significant
M - measurable, meaningful,
A - attainable, achievable, acceptable, action-oriented
R - realistic, reasonable,

T - time-based, timely, tangible, trackable

For Each category set one or two goals.

Step 2: Make your Goals Public

In order to ensure that you push the onus on yourself on setting your goals make your goals public. Let your closest friends and family know what you are striving towards. If your goal is to quit smoking, if your friends care about you, they will not smoke in front of you and might even kick your butt if you light a butt :D.

Telling your friends and family also helps because it might be an awkward dinner table conversation if you are totally straying away from your goal. This one thing can be a HUGE Motivation factor. You don't need to share all, but some you can. And if you are doing good achieving one, its a cascade effect - you will do good on your personal goals as well.

My 2 big goals of the year

- read one book every 2 weeks

- run the 7/25 San francisco Half Marathon

Step 3: Track your Goals

If you have followed Step 1 and 2 you should be able to track your goals. If you see yourself slipping you will be able to know what are the reasons why you are not able to keep pu with your goals?

You can use sites like daytum or joesgoals, while i still think some of them provide neat UI features - if you are decent with excel that will be the best bet. You then have the option to slice and dice the data as you like.

From Daytum - the books i have read for this month.

From Daytum - my mile tracker for the year. Also shows me the dates and miles i have run on those days.
The intent of this post was to make my goals more public and find out how others are doing for their 2010 goals. Looking forward to seeing your progress and comments on this topic.

My Getting Things Done Process

2010-01-22T14:44:00.000-08:00

For Those reading some of my thoughts and ramblings know that I love reading productivity books, tips, tricks and have tried a few of them as well. While most of the productivity tips are usefull only if you make it into a habit or incorporate it into your routine, there is no denying the fact that you have to make any technique "yours" for it to work.

After reading about the Pomodoro Technique, Getting Things Done these are some of the best learnings that i have successfully implemented and created my own flavor of getting things done.

Step 1 - Brain Dump
- Make a list of all the projects (anything that needs to be done) that you can think of.
- Define goals or outcomes for projects that are not errands.
- Add a context to your lists (someday, priority, urgent, phone, email, surf, recurring ) etc.
- I have a physical inbox that i capture all bills and mail and have it on calendar to process my inbox as well.

Step 2 - Pomodoros
- I dont use a timer but i break these tasks into 30 min activities.

Step 3 - Calendar
- I extensively use google calendar and break my day down into chucks of 30 mins and everytime i have a 30 min thats open i go to my list and process one item at a time.
- All recurring activities find a spot on the calendar, so i dont have to worry about it anymore.
- One of the recurring tasks is to review the project list.

One of the keys to getting this to work is to stick to your calendar and make sure that your tasks are well defined. Like any process to work RINSE AND REPEAT.

Personal Vs Professional Networking

2010-01-16T15:37:00.000-08:00

A common problem for those of us who have profiles on Social Networking sites like Facebook,Linked In is to draw a line between Professional and Personal Relationships.
There is little or no doubt that Relationship Matters and it's not What you know but Who you know. Lets take a look at the two most common scenarios that I have had to deal with.

What do you do when a coworker requests to add you on Facebook?

So you go out for a couple drinks with a bunch of coworkers to celebrate an official accomplishment. The next day you get a friend request on Facebook. You can choose to
a) ignore and have a few awkward moments at work
b) accept and have your coworker look at your personal life
c) set up a limited profile (sans the personal spice). but if your coworker is slightly net savvy they would know right away that the profile is a little bare.

Solution: DO NOT post anything on your profile you dont want people at work to see. If you live by this rule, you would not have an uneasy feel when you a get a coworker friend request. And who knows having your coworker on facebook might help them understand your personality and improve your working relationship as well.

What do you do when a high school friend requests to add you on LinkedIn?

This is not half as bad as the Scenario 1, but things can get a little messy when your friend decides to write you recommendation about how he helped you with your Math Assignment in School. Well firstly that is not something you would like on your LinkedIn profile. If your friend does send you a recommendation, I would send him a friendly reply declining the recommendation but thanking him for the thought. Similarly, I would refrain from sending recommendations to people that I haven't worked with or wouldn't recommend on a professional capacity. He might be a great guy to hang out with but that is not what LinkedIn is for.

Finally, setting up personal rules such as limited profiles on facebook, or a general rule that I will not add coworkers on facebook might help if you stick to without prejudice. Similarly on LinkedIn, connecting only to known people and reducing the noise might help you fulfill your goal for using the tools. At the end of the day, what you get out of it is totally dependent on how you want to use it. The tool is only as good as the toolsman.

The Unemployed States of America

2010-01-15T10:07:00.000-08:00

The Unemployed States of America: "

Although pace of mass layoffs in the U.S. has slowed, there are an average of six unemployed Americans for each job opening. Long-term unemployment is the grim reality for 5.8 million workers who have been idle for more than six months. Here is a graphic look at The Unemployed States of America.

Click to Enlarge

Source: Business Pundit

CauseWorld Lets Users Give To Haiti Via Their iPhone

2010-01-15T09:43:00.000-08:00

CauseWorld Lets Users Give To Haiti Via Their iPhone: "

CauseWorld (iTunes link), an iPhone app from Shopkick, is off to a strong start. They first launched in December, and they quickly got the coveted featured spot on the iTunes app store. Yesterday, they started letting users donate to the American Red Cross for Haiti relief.

The application gives users karma points for checking in to certain retail stores. Those karma points can then be converted into donations to various charities and other good causes (water in Sudan, food for the poor, trees in the Amazon, etc.). Big brands supply the cash for donations (and get lots of advertising exposure). Users decide how that money gets spent. see our original launch post for more details.

We’re waiting patiently for user and usage numbers for the CauseWorld. The app combines the addictiveness and gameplay at FourSquare and Gowalla with actual good deeds, and we’re hoping it’s a winner.

In the meantime, Shopkick has added donations to Haiti via the American Red Cross, and Shopkick is matching all donations. So after you’ve donated cash directly to help that desperate situation, and have text messaged some more money in, download the CauseWorld app and go check into some retail stores (no purchase is required). Shopkick says that as soon as they added Haiti, the “entire feed was filled with Haiti contributions.”

Shopkick has raised $2.5 million in venture capital from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Reid Hoffman. The company is based in Silicon Valley.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Apple Stunning customer service

2010-01-07T19:07:00.000-08:00

When was the last time, you got served by a customer care representative at a major store and you walked out of the store with a feeling that you were actually taken care of ! It happened to me, not once but twice in short time intervals at the,wait for it ---- APPLE STORE.

A few months ago, I accidentally dropped my iphone, out of warranty and no personal care program, and the screen cracked. Even though I could use the phone, it was a major pain. Went to the Apple store showed them the phone, they said, no problem they can replace the phone for me. I was amazed and I said to myself, well screens are probably cheap, but still no additional labor charges, and the usual bunch of hidden fees that we get slapped with at most other stores. It was a very pleasant 10 minutes at the store and I walked out with a brand new phone. Impressed but not stunned.

Over the Christmas holidays, we had left our 2 year old Mac book open on the floor. With a bunch of people at home, someone accidentally stepped on it and crushed the hard drive. I took my Macbook to the apple store, and explained to the geniuses @the genius bar, the situation. The Genius, asked me about the data, which was thankfully well backed up with a time machine, and said it needs a new hard drive, but you are out of warranty. I asked him if there was something he could do to help out, he looked at his screen again and said, WE WILL TAKE CARE OF IT THIS TIME. Totally Stunned !

He also mentioned that Apple doesn't carry 120gb hard drive anymore so they will have to replace it with a 160gb, is that fine with me? I looked at him and said are you kidding me?? sure !! I got a receipt with a number to track the service request online. I was told it would take 3-5 business days. Before I could find time to get online and look at the status of the request, I got a call this morning, 24 hrs later that the laptop was ready for pickup and oh by the way they also replaced the wearing out keyboard skin, without me for free. Got the mac back home, hooked it back up to my time machine and I was back where I left out only with a bigger hard drive and a new keyboard skin at no cost.

I was so excited that I told all my coworkers about it at work, I am now blogging about it and also posted a "god bless apple" status on face book. I'm sure the marketing guru's at Apple are aware that this is the kind of viral marketing, word of mouth buzz you get when you spend a couple hundred dollars to make your customer happy. Will it dent the pile of cash sitting at apple, maybe not, but it sure got made an apple fan boy a season ticket holder.

What's next islate ? Bring it on guys - I will succumb for it.

Mumbai's Dabbawalla

2009-10-04T15:49:00.000-07:00

Mumbai's Dabbawalla's are a testimony to the Keeping it simple Principle. Check this video out to learn more.

Their Website http://www.mydabbawala.org has an interesting section that talks about the Top 10 reasons to use their service. Reading them i realized how cleverly those reasons have been compiled. They use classic marketing technique of making an emotional connection, highlighting their USP and Plain and simple stating facts.

Emotional Connection:

Save your hard earned pennie
Do you not love your mother or wife and like to eat food made by her?
By using their service build india's image, give employment to 5000+ families and promote Indian/Marathi culture

State Facts

Home made food is best for health and because health is wealth.
Outside junk foods may take your life and makes you sick.
The Local train of Mumbai are always very crowed and its hard for you to carry your lunch box.
Home made food keeps your doctors bill down and there are fewer absences from office due to poor health.
In fact bad food is the reason #1 of all the diseases.

Highlight your USP

The delivery charges of Rs 250 - 300 per month is very nominal and reasonable.
By using their services you are getting hot food safely deliver in your office
Reliable services and their performance and accuracy match six sigma standards.
The Clincher ! The DabbaWalas never go on strike.

At the end of the day however a great product or service needs no marketing.

Now can you please start some delivery in the Bay Area.

Why do people spend time on Social Media?

2009-10-04T14:22:00.001-07:00

It boggles many minds, earns plenty grins, but the question remains as mystic as the answer. Why do people spend time on Social Media ? Any smart answers ??

Harvard Business School Professor Mikolaj Jan Piskorski has spent years researching this and is featured in this interesting article http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6156.html . Here are some interesting finding !

What do people do !

PICTURES - People love looking at pictures.
70% of all actions are related to viewing pictures.
Turns out most men look at pictures of women they don't know,
followed by men looking at pictures of women they do know and
Women look at other women's pictures they know.
Women profile's receive two-thirds of all page views.

Causing Break ups?

Lot of guys in relationships looking at women they did'nt know.
It's an easy way to see if anyone might be a better match.
Online networks act as cover, you know everything about someone without being in their face.

Twitter Truths !

90% of tweats comes from 10% of Tweeters.
there are more women on Twitter than men,
women tweet about the same rate as men,
but men's tweets are followed by both sexes much more than expected.

Google's Tribute to MK Gandhi

2009-10-02T09:19:00.000-07:00

Google, the internet search engine giant today showcased MK Gandhi, on its home page. A great tribute to the Father of the Nation on his 140 birth anniversary, also known as Gandhi Jayanti.

Now if only the banks, schools and offices also decided to celebrate this, wouldnt that be awesome !

Healthcare Napkins All

2009-09-29T18:41:00.001-07:00

Check out this SlideShare Presentation: It is a very neatly done presentation on the healthcare reforms that the govt is trying to pass.

Over the years they have said that actions speak louder than words in other words a working piece of software or a demo was far more effective than talking about it.

Dan Roam author of "The back of the napkin" takes the theory head on and is solving problems and selling ideas with pictures.

Im sold !

Healthcare Napkins All

View more documents from Dan Roam.

Earn $100,000 in 6 pitches - are you an athlete?

2009-08-26T22:00:00.000-07:00

Sports and money sportsman earn has always been a fascinating story. Is it too much money ? Is it too early in his career, will it make him/break him. Every single walking person has an opinion and of course thinks its valid too.

In India, unless you play cricket and hit it big, prize winnings as mentioned below are far and few between. Exceptions are there, for every 100 successful cricketers you have one Vishwanathan Anand. Another exception, the Super Attractive Sania Mirza who despite the fact has no grand slam, or no major tournament win is still one of the highest earners in India. Guess Glam is better than Grand Slam !!

In the US, large part of the economy runs on Sports. I can do some analysis later but Comcast cable that shows the sports, major commercial brands crank up their marketing budgets for the super bowl, hundreds and thousands of college level athletes trying to make it to the professional level everybody and everything is based on sports being a commodity.

The opportunity is there you have minor league, major league, softball, baseball and heck if thats not enough you also have the World Series of Dominoes live on ESPN. (Pinch me) !

A recent article in WSJ did the study focussing on how long it would take for athletes to earn $100,00. It takes a US Citizen an average of 4 years to earn 100k.

Considering the fact that athletes have to bust their butt, these are their fine winnings !!

ATHLETE/SPORT TO EARN $100,000

Alex Rodriguez, MLB 6 pitches

Ben Roethlisberger, NFL* 4 snaps

Tiger Woods, golf 11 holes

LeBron James, NBA* 21 minutes

Roger Federer, tennis 28 games

Tony Stewart, Nascar 125 laps

Norm Duke, bowling* 2,360 frames

*last full season

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203706604574371013208743826.html

Now wonder what Team India must be thinking. I need to play a test match for 5 days and not even be assured of a result, place in the next game. Can I throw 6 pitches and pocket a few ?