Lets Call It Vision Assam 2020

Over 35 million people, 800 plus tea gardens, mighty Brahmaputra and abundant water resources; 10 universities & equal number of institutes of higher learning in technology and medicine, endowed with resources like natural gases, petroleum, limestone and other minerals, good demographic diversity, high literacy rate, diverse flora and fauna, suitable agricultural climate, great wild life and one horn rhino, surrounded states having rich unexplored natural beauty, rich cultural heritage (not to forget Dr Bhupen Hazarika), and more than one decade of stable political environment. Still amidst this abundance we are lagging behind in economic development.

Why?

Take any sector - Tourism, Healthcare, Education, IT & ITES, Knowledge Industry, Agri, Power,  overall employment generation  etc. etc. and we are just not there! Even state like Orissa is ahead of us now.

What we, as general citizen, can do about it?

Put forward our ideas/ thoughts, play the role of a catalyst and act as a think tank. Mobilize intelectia and responsible media to raise societal awareness on these topics and in the process help authorities and society at large to come up with actionable plan.

This is the backdrop for Sunday, 4th Nov evening. Let’s discuss on what should be our collective vision. Vision for next 10 years. Call it Vision Assam 2020. 

Due to various constraints we will not be able to invite all. But please share your thoughts/ ideas & will get in touch with you.

Ten Gandhi's Memorable Quotes

Let’s start with the eleventh one - this is my all time favorite quote. 

• Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.

Here are the ten :

1. My life is my message.
2. I regard myself as a soldier, though a soldier of peace.
3. You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.
4. Nonviolence is the first article of my faith. It is also the last article of my creed.
5. Seven social sins: politics without principles, wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, and worship without sacrifice.
6. An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it. Truth stands, even if there be no public support. It is self sustained.

Read on ...

Hey, It's Weekend Here!

Three posts for your weekend. Hope you will like!

1. You will agree that we are all politician to certain degree. But, if you want to be a successful politician and particularly if you are a women you can run to IIM Bangalore. IIM-Bangalore offers course to make women ‘professional politicians'. Read on ...

2. If you are planning to do weekend shopping then before you headout check this out. My Father's Fashion Tips

3. Do you know why everything looks so amazing and nobody is happy? Here you go - hilerious Louis CK


Enjoy the weekend!

To Understand Startups Understand Growth

Morning view of mighty Brahmaputra from IIT Guwahati. Taken by Gunjan

If you want to understand startups, understand growth  - this the key. I missed sharing this brilliant article on understanding startups over the weekend. I was also double minded - it's not really a 5 mins read. If it is more than 2000 words - people will not read - this is what my daughter tells. Assuming an average person reads about 300 words per min this is about 15 min read. But, nonetheless, I couldn't stop sharing this - I know some of you would like this.

A startup is a company designed to grow fast. Being newly founded does not in itself make a company a startup. Nor is it necessary for a startup to work on technology, or take venture funding, or have some sort of "exit." The only essential thing is growth. Everything else we associate with startups follows from growth. Read on & put your comments ...

Byte, Kilobyte ... Petabytes

While trying to explain storage in computer (byte, kilobyte, gigabyte etc) to my 4th grader son, Mon, yesterday, I found this interesting detailing of byte, kilobytes .... While terabytes is vary large amount of data - 10 terabytes is the printed collection of the US Library of Congress & today all PC are shipped with terabytes of hard disc. So, most of us have terabytes of storage at home and we consume this very rapidly. Interestingly, Walmart took 40 years to get their data warehouse at 400 terabytes. Facebook probably generates that every 4 days.

• Bytes(8 bits)

  • 0.1 bytes: A binary decision
  • 1 byte: A single character
  • 10 bytes: A single word
  • 100 bytes: A telegram OR A punched card

• Kilobyte (1000 bytes)

  • 1 Kilobyte: A very short story
  • 2 Kilobytes: A Typewritten page
  • 10 Kilobytes: An encyclopaedic page OR A deck of punched cards
  • 50 Kilobytes: A compressed document image page
  • 100 Kilobytes: A low-resolution photograph
  • 200 Kilobytes: A box of punched cards
  • 500 Kilobytes: A very heavy box of punched cards

• Megabyte (1 000 000 bytes)

  • 1 Megabyte: A small novel OR A 3.5 inch floppy disk
  • 2 Megabytes: A high resolution photograph
  • 5 Megabytes: The complete works of Shakespeare OR 30 seconds of TV-quality video
  • 10 Megabytes: A minute of high-fidelity sound OR A digital chest X-ray
  • 20 Megabytes: A box of floppy disks
  • 50 Megabytes: A digital mammogram
  • 100 Megabytes: 1 meter of shelved books OR A two-volume encyclopaedic book
  • 200 Megabytes: A reel of 9-track tape OR An IBM 3480 cartridge tape
  • 500 Megabytes: A CD-ROM OR The hard disk of a PC 

• Gigabyte (1 000 000 000 bytes)

  • 1 Gigabyte: A pickup truck filled with paper OR A symphony in high-fidelity sound OR A movie at TV quality
  • 2 Gigabytes: 20 meters of shelved books OR A stack of 9-track tapes
  • 5 Gigabytes: An 8mm Exabyte tape
  • 10 Gigabytes:
  • 20 Gigabytes: A good collection of the works of Beethoven OR 5 Exabyte tapes OR A VHS tape used for digital data
  • 50 Gigabytes: A floor of books OR Hundreds of 9-track tapes
  • 100 Gigabytes: A floor of academic journals OR A large ID-1 digital tape
  • 200 Gigabytes: 50 Exabyte tapes

• Terabyte (1 000 000 000 000 bytes)

  • 1 Terabyte: An automated tape robot OR All the X-ray films in a large technological hospital OR 50000 trees made into paper and printed OR Daily rate of EOS data (1998)
  • 2 Terabytes: An academic research library OR A cabinet full of Exabyte tapes
  • 10 Terabytes: The printed collection of the US Library of Congress
  • 50 Terabytes: The contents of a large Mass Storage System

• Petabyte (1 000 000 000 000 000 bytes)

  • 1 Petabyte: 5 years of EOS data (at 46 mbps)
  • 2 Petabytes: All US academic research libraries
  • 20 Petabytes: Production of hard-disk drives in 1995
  • 200 Petabytes: All printed material OR Production of digital magnetic tape in 1995

• Exabyte (1 000 000 000 000 000 000 bytes)

  • 5 Exabytes: All words ever spoken by human beings.

• Zettabyte (1 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 bytes)

• Yottabyte (1 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 bytes)

Welcome to 2035...the Age of Surprise

We are definitely moving towards the age of surprise. See this video from  U.S. Air Force Center for Strategy and Technology. Singularity is not far.

... collective intelligence of humanity drives innovation

 in every direction while enabling new threats from super-empowered individuals with new domains, interconnecting faster than ever before. 

Unlimited combinations create unforeseen consequences...
get ready for the Age of Surprise.

It's Weekend Again

It's Saturday afternoon here! I am enjoying  cocktail of Backstreet Boys, Rabin Goswami along with Bhupen Hazarika and Carly Jespen and thought of sharing few interesting post that can burn your weekend fat.

1. Big data is invading everywhere with variety, velocity and volume. Soccer Embraces Big Data to Quantify the Beautiful Game. Adidas' miCoach data tracker can be embedded in players uniforms to collect and analyse real time data about the player when he/ she is in the field. 

We’ve always had lies, damned lies and statistics,” said Timbers assistant coach Amos Magee. “For example, just because a guy is covering a lot of ground, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s smart running or that he’s in the right place at the right time. That’s a statistic that needs to come with experience. So some of these measurements are going to be useful, but some aren’t. We’ll just have to see which ones fill a void.”
 
In that capacity, miCoach readings will fit right in with the rest of soccer’s statistics. There’s another school of thought, however, that presents an even warier eye.

“Soccer is so much art, and art is impossible to measure, like music or dance or paintings,” said Hackworth. “The beauty of our sport is that there are so many creative, imaginative and skillful moments, and you’ll never be able to truly quantify that.”

Read on ...  

p.s. In case you are interested to get a quick bite of what is Big Data -> here it is!
 
2. This one is specifically for Rabin, Dhruba, Ratul, Arup da,  Mrinal .. The Benefits of Middle-Age Fitness
You may not live longer because of this but will live better. 

Read on ...  Let me know how it is progressing!

3. Recently, I met 50 just passed out engineering graduates. I experienced the validation of this post after spending one hour with them. Eight Products the Facebook Generation Will Not Buy

1. email
2. Beer
3. News paper
4. Landline phone                    

Why Our Graduates Are Not Production Ready?

In almost every time I go for campus recruitment to various engineering colleges across the country, I ask a simple question to all students. What did you learn in last 4 years? Invariably the answer is stereotyped one - "C", or Java or Data Structure etc. etc. (because I'm from an IT company). No one tells that I learned how to solve problem. This is reality. Our engineering colleges across the country don't teach students how to solve problems. Colleges are focused on teaching tools & techniques. Leaving aside few privately run colleges observe the communication skills of our students. Our academia is not focused on this also. And, as a result one can't recruit a graduate and deploy him/ her in production work. They are not production ready - even after 4 years of training in higher institution of learning. They need to go through finishing school. This New Your Times blog post has few other areas where our graduates and academia needs to focus.

Is there a way to make our graduates production ready when they are out of the colleges? Here is my recommendation to all our future engineering graduates -

1. Learn problem solving techniques
2. Focus on communication - verbal and written
3. Understand that career is your - you can't outsource that to your supervisor & company. So understand what it takes to build a successful career. A positive attitude right from the begining
4. Train yourself so you can do hard work. General advice is work smart but today it is "Work Hard & Work Smart".

A password that you don't need to remember!

Remembering password is a pain. So many passwords for so many different systems that we used - email, bank account, computer, online store, online magazine etc. etc. Forget about  the lot of similar size for office related works. And, each password system has its own system to make it complex.

 Cryptography is an interesting & important subject. Most of us have used some form of ciphering techniques even in our school days - passing secret messages amongst friends or playing with cipher texts.

However, it is a pain to remember password! And, since you need to remember the password that means someone can force you to reproduce it and that happens. Obviously, biometric system helps tremendously but from a pure security stand point biometric systems are also not 100% secure.


Now, researchers from Stanford, Northwestern and SRI laying out a new solution that relies on implicit learning, a process by which you absorb new information — but you’re completely unaware that you’ve actually learn anything - something like learning to ride a bike or learning to swim. In short, the system teaches the password to a part of your brain that you cannot physically access — but it is still there in your subconscious, just waiting to be tapped. So, if you don't know your password, you can't tell it to anyone.

Question is how can you use a password that you don't know. Read on ... 

Weekend Read - The World as We Knew it is Over. Now What?

Views from the CEO of Victors & Spoils - John Winsor

 

We are in the midst of a radical revolution. While, some call it the digital revolution it’s much bigger than that. For sure, digital technology is at the foundation of this revolution but it is only the catalyst to the change. Fundamentally, economic value is created from economic inefficiencies. If you were a farmer and owned fertile land it was more economically efficient for you to grow crops than for someone else that lives on a rocky hill. Hence, people buy vegetables from you rather than grow vegetables themselves.  Read on ...

Maa Passed Away on May 31, 2012

After fighting with Chronic Leaver Disease for last one & half year she left us on Thursday May 31, 2012. I want to thank all of you for reaching out to us in this difficult time and apology to those of you whom I couldn't pass the message on time.

Short Weekend Read

Organizations or business are not battlefield  it is an ecosystem where one organ can’t function properly without other.

http://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/corporate-culture-business-is-not-a-battlefield.html

Value Creation, Innovation, You, Me, Organization ...

Value creation is an interesting topic. So as innovation, rather micro innovation. Equally interesting is new breed of business enterprise (a.k.a Enterprise 2.0). And the ecosystems around it. Observe, how these three (value creation, micro innovation & new business enterprises)  are connected and how a new definition of value system is emerging.

Hiya2

Traditionally we understand the value creation by any business entities lies around three thing - value (rather wealth) for promoter/ share holder, customer & employees. Successful organization has created values for these three entities - definitely for the first two. Closer looks into some of the new generation business entities highlight another dimension, 4th dimension, of value creation - Societal value. There are whole of new generation business organization from whom you really don't buy anything. And without being a real customer in traditional sense these organizations adds tremendous value to our lives. What do you buy from Google, Facebook or Twitter? Look at the valuation of facebook, linkedin, groupon ... simply amazing! 

Let’s look at innovation now. Innovation is essentially creating values out of an idea or implementation of an idea to create wealth. Without tangible value a new idea can be invention but not innovation. Even thought Humphry Davy invented light bulb early 1800 but it was not useful. Later, in 1880 Edison made commercially viable light bulbs - this is innovation. Even though Edison didn't invent the bulb but due to unparallel impact on human civilization we call Edison the inventor. Today successful organizations, commercial or non-commercial, are fostering innovations. These innovations are like making colored bulb - each new colored bulb creates value. This is micro innovation!

Successful organizations have built in these two paradigm (creating value for society & investing in micro innovation) in their culture. Engaging employees & customers in innovation, and creating services for people in general without attaching a $ string is the way to go to build a lasting organization. Money is the byproduct of these new generation organizations.

Earlier this month Facebook  acquired  Instagram for $1B. What was insgram's revenue?

Zerg Rush in Google

Type Zerg rush in google or click here  and see what happens!

User Experience Vs User Interface Inographice

I stumbled upon this funny but very interesting  infographic on difference between UX & UI & thought of sharing.