Check out pics from our last vacation to Queensland. Reason for the delay in posting them is my frustration in finding the right pic-sharing site (will gripe abt it later)
Coming soon in a post near you...all abt our queensland vacation!
Meanwhile....enjoy the pics !
Wednesday, September 6, 2006
Friday, September 1, 2006
10 Best presentations
Found this on my comp when I returned from work...apparently the wifey got the link from somewhere. This is on the blog of a site called www.knowhr.com (can be found here) Anyway, it is an interesting list. Consists of links to google video's mostly. So here goes:
Top 10 Best Presentations Ever
Sarah and I were talking about great presentations we’d seen or heard about and she came up with an idea for a Top 10 list. Here’s our take on the Top 10 Best Presentations Ever (in no particular order…and if you have others to add, we’d love to hear about them):
Steve Jobs introduces the Macintosh in 1984. Back then, Steve dressed like Tucker Carlson circa 2006, but black tee shirts and jeans or double-breasted jacket and bow tie, this Macintosh unveiling rocked the house. Steve has perfected the sense of theater, and none is better than this one. Check out how he pulls the 3.5-inch floppy from his jacket pocket. Flair, baby.
Dick Hardt’s Identity 2.0 presentation at OSCON 2005. Hardt’s preparation and energy sets the standard for presentation quality. He uses hundreds of slides in this 20-minute, high buzz work. Heck, I didn’t even care about virtual identity and still watched this one five or six times. It has a chance of becoming my presentation Dirty Dancing (which I’ve seen 100 times), where “nobody puts baby in the corner.”
Guy Kawasaki’s Art of the Start speech at TiECon 2006. In the 40-minute presentation (PDF of slides here), Kawasaki talks about innovation and business evangelism. When he talks about “Make Mantra” it’s well worth listening to. The beauty of his speech is that he uses a Top 10 approach and is unafraid to speak plainly and with great humor (which is sadly lost in public speaking).
Dr. Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream speech in 1963. Who can argue that Dr. King’s speech in Washington on August 28, 1963 was anything but brilliant and changed the trajectory of America? But the rheotrical beauty of this speech is also unparalleled. At a time when our language has been reduced to the common, it’s essential to look upon the preparation and thought that Dr. King used for this monumetal speech.
Lawrence Lessig’s Free Culture talk at the 2002 Open Source Conference. The master of the simple slides shows us how it’s done. And since, as he says, this is his 100th time for this talk, he has this bad boy down solid. Even though this talk is from 2002, his slide presentation style is still as fresh today as Axe Body Spray.
Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink presentation at SXSW 2005. I’ve seen Gladwell talk a couple of times in person, and he’s brilliant. He talks fast and he makes points by telling stories. He doesn’t lecture, he paints a picture. All this from one of the foremost thinkers of our age. Gladwell makes the points, “We can do more with less. And there are real dangers in giving people too much information.” Hey, that reminds me, Where are his slides? Oh, he’s presenting without slides. How about that?
Tom Peters presents A Ham Sandwich in 1990. Okay, this isn’t a Peters presentation, but the guy has so much passion that he can make a ham sandwich sound compelling. I saw him a few times in the late 80s during the height of the Thriving on Chaos days, and that was some rallying cry. In the link here, Peters outlines what makes a great presentation. No one can leave a Tom Peters presentation saying they weren’t energized and entertained.
Seth Godin talks about Marketing at Google in 2006. “Technology doesn’t win, but it sure gives you a chance at marketing.” Godin knows the story, lived it, and tells it. He also uses slides to his advantage to persuade his audience that he’s right. Check out the slide he calls “No one cares about you.” Is there anything wrong with getting people to laugh and think at the same time?
Andy Kaufman sings along to Mighty Mouse on SNL in 1975. Mies van der Rohe would have been proud, because Kaufman showed the essence of “less is more” in this Saturday Night Live skit. I’m not suggesting that your presentations should be filled renditions of superhero songs, but negative space is important, and this presentation was both ahead of its time and pointed in its simplicity.
Rupert Everett sings I Say a Little Prayer for You in MBFW in 1997. Okay, this is just one of our favorites and isn’t exactly a “presentation.” In fact, it’s from a movie - My Best Friend’s Wedding. But isn’t a lot of what we do a “presentation” designed to persuade people to believe our story? The beauty of this one is the lead-in and then the music. Oh, the power of music. And if you haven’t seen this movie, the last scene is just fantastic.
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
Jerry Kaplan on Entrepreunership
Came across this nice pieces of advice by Jerry Kaplan. Though it is specific to entrpreneurship, its a pretty good collection of thoughts, and is probably applicable to all.
I came across Jerry Kaplan when I read his book "Startup"....a book about how he stareted up his company GO and how it went down. Having worked in a startup myself, I found the story quite similar to my own experience.
I came across Jerry Kaplan when I read his book "Startup"....a book about how he stareted up his company GO and how it went down. Having worked in a startup myself, I found the story quite similar to my own experience.
Top 5 Mistakes Entrepreneurs Make
- They have unclear goals: If you don’t define your goals, how will you know when you’re successful? The exercise of writing down your goal for your venture focuses your thinking. Kaplan recounted one business venture for which he and his partner defined success as a valuation of $20 million - a fact that they had to recall when their venture reached a $2 billion valuation and they needed to figure out what to do.
- They’re trying to prove they’re smarter than other people: This is the wrong reason to start a entrepreneurial venture - these people have a tendency to lay blame on others, and avoid responsibility for their failures.
- They’re get too greedy: This mistake reflects a tendency by amateur entrepreneurs to hoard equity. There’s a saying in Silicon Valley about equity: “Equity is like manure. If the you pile it all in one place, all you have is a smelly pile of shit. Spread it around, and you create the conditions required to make things to grow.”
- They hire people they like: That’s not to say that you have to hire people you hate, merely that an entrepreneur must avoid hiring the people they like instead of the right people for the job.
- They don’t know when to let go: Company are like babies - when they’re small, they need you and there’s something satisfying about being needed and having to take care of everything for them. But when they’re 13, they just want your money and for you to go away. As the person that starts a company, you need to recognize that starting a company requires a completely different skill set than the one that grows the company to $100 million. Be prepared to let go - and make sure your team is prepared for you to leave.
Top 5 Critical Attitudes Entrepreneurs Need
- The belief that they can make a difference: To overcome the odds against success, an entrepreneur needs to passionately believe in the idea that one person can make a different. And that they are that person.
- Passion for making things happen: The people that make good entrepreneurs can’t help but make things happen. Lots of people have ideas, but if you don’t try, you’ll never succeed.
- Unjustifiable optimism: If you’re going to be turned down by 30 venture capitalists, you’re going to need something to keep you going. Great anecdote: FedEx, early in its development, couldn’t make its payroll and it looked like the company was going to fold - so the head of the company took the remaining money to Las Vegas, bet it all, and won. You have to believe you’re going to succeed.
- High tolerance for uncertainty: You’re not always going to have all the information you need, when you need it. If you wait for all the information, it’ll probably be too late to do anything useful. Deal with it.
- Urgent patience: This is a balancing act between trying to get things done, and realizing that things take time.
- Genuine concern for other people: The only way you’ll succeed is if you actually care about the people you work with - it breeds loyalty, and that breeds success. People love to work for people they know care about them.
Top 5 Critical Skills Entrepreneurs Need
- Leadership: Leadership is a difficult thing to define. When things are going well, you don’t need leadership. But when things are going badly, the ability to get people to come together, make compromises, and move forward is what makes the difference between success and failure. That’s leadership.
- Communication skills: Most people won’t remember what you said five minutes after you said it. You have to keep it simple. Which leads to the next point…
- The ability to make sure people know their jobs: Communication is critical to making sure everyone knows where they fit in the company, what will happen if they aren’t successful in doing their job.
- Know when to make a decision: Amateurs make decisions too early, before they have corrected all of the pertinent information. Perfectionists wait until everything is certain. An entrepreneur needs to learn to live in between those extremes.
- Teamwork: Key to utilizing the people you hired (presumably the right people, right?) is having the sense to delegate tasks, accept their input, and let them get the job done. You can’t do it all yourself.
- The ability to “telescope”: An entrepreneurs needs to be able to “zoom in” to examine the detail in various areas, while maintaining the ability to “zoom out” and take in the big picture.
- The ability to be direct, but polite: At some point, you’re going to have to be able to be polite, but direct. Example: at some point you’re going to have to figure out how to say “Bob, it might be a good idea if you took a shower before you came to work”, but nicer.
Monday, June 26, 2006
Trivia tidbits
* Received the only A+ Benjamin Graham ever handed out to a student in his security analysis class in while studying a Master's degree in economics at Columbia Business School - Warren Buffett.
Wednesday, May 3, 2006
Books to be read
Business Books:
1) Digital Capital - Don Tapscott
2) Crossing the Chasm - Geoffrey More
3) Inside the Tornado - Geoffrey Moore
4) Mind of the Strategist - Kenichi Ohmae
5) Essential Drucker - Peter F. Drucker
Mosy Influential Mgmt Books - Forbes List
1) In Search of Excellence - Tom Peters
2) Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies - James Collins, Jerry Porras
3) Reengineering the Corporation - Michael Hammer, James Champy
4) Competetive Advantage - Micahel Porter
5) Crossing the chasm: Marketing and Selling Technology Products to Mainstream Customers - Geoffrey Moore, Regis McKenna
6) Seven Habits of Highly Effective People - Stephen R. Covey
7) The Six Sigma Way - Peter Pande, Robert Neuman, Roland Cavanagh
8) The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fall - Clayton Christiansen
9) The Essential drucker - Peter F. Drucker
10) Competing for the Future - Gary Hamel, C.K. Prahalad
11) Good to Great: Why Some Companies make the Leap...and some others Don't - James Collins
Other:
1) The Moon is a Harsh Mistress - Robert A Heinlein
2) Chronicle of a death foretold - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
3) Tortilla Flat - John Steinbeck
4) Complete Poems of T.S. Eliot
5) The Dispossesed - Ursula Guin
6) Left Hand of Darkeness - Ursula Guin
7) My Son's Father - Dom Moraes
8) Harpo Speaks - Harpo Marx
9) Meditations - Maurcus Aurelius, Translated by Gregory Hayes
10) A Variety of Absences: The Collected Memoirs of Dom Moraes - Moraes, Dom
11) What Should I Do With My Life? - Bronson, Po
Career development ?! (ANZ)
Richard Bolles: "What Color is Your Parachute"
Duane Brown: "Career Choice and Development"
Stephen Covey: "7 Habits of Highly Effective People"
Charles Givens: "Super Self"
Charles Handy: "The age of unreason"
Rob Parsons: "The Heart of Success"
Anthony Robbins: "Unlimited Power"
Paul Stevens: "Stop postponing the rest of your life"
Rosamund Stone Zander & Benjamin Zander: "The art of possibility"
David Boyle's reading list
Leadership, Teamwork, Corporate Excellence and Learning Organisation:
* The Fifth Discipline, Peter M. Senge
* The Fifth Discipline Field Book, Peter Senge et al
* A Force for Change, John P. Kotter
* Open Book Management, John Case
* Team Players and Teamwork, Glenn M. Parker
* Good to Great, Jim Collins
* Built to Last, Jim Collins & Jerry Porras
* The Agenda, Michael Hammer
Thinking & Problem Solving:
* The Fermi Solution, Hans Christian von Baeyer
* A History of Western Philosophy, Bertrand Russell
* Principia Mathematica to '56, Alfred North Whitehead & Bertrand
Russell (this is a short version that deals primarily with the foundations
of the logic from the original three volume set)
* A New Kind of Science, Stephen Wolfram
Quality:
* Firing on All Cylinders, Jim Clemmer
* Why Things Bite Back, Edward Tenner (not really a book on quality,
more about why things go wrong)
* For a detailed and comprehensive view of Quality, the internet is
the best (and free) source. Go to www.quality.nist.gov for info on the
Malcolm Baldridge Quality Award and www.isixsigna.com/ca/baldridge/ for a
lot of info on the intersection of six sigma and Baldridge, including an
interesting link to a site that compares the Deming framework and Baldridge.
Strategy:
* Competitive Strategy, Michael E. Porter
* Product Strategy for High-Technology Companies, Michael E. McGrath
* The Innovator's Dilemma, Clayton M. Christensen
* Total Global Strategy, George S. Yip
Marketing, Ideas, Selling:
* Guerrilla Marketing, Jay Conrad Levinson
* Jump Start Your Brain, Doug Hall
* Consultative Selling, MackHanan, James Cribbin & Herman Heiser
* A Passion for Ideas, Ed. Heinrich v. Pierer & Bolko v. Oetinger
General Business Books:
* The Portable MBA, Eliza G.C. Collins & Mary Anne Devanna
* Accounting Fundamentals for Non-Accountants, Stephen A. Moscove
1) Digital Capital - Don Tapscott
2) Crossing the Chasm - Geoffrey More
3) Inside the Tornado - Geoffrey Moore
4) Mind of the Strategist - Kenichi Ohmae
5) Essential Drucker - Peter F. Drucker
Mosy Influential Mgmt Books - Forbes List
1) In Search of Excellence - Tom Peters
2) Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies - James Collins, Jerry Porras
3) Reengineering the Corporation - Michael Hammer, James Champy
4) Competetive Advantage - Micahel Porter
5) Crossing the chasm: Marketing and Selling Technology Products to Mainstream Customers - Geoffrey Moore, Regis McKenna
6) Seven Habits of Highly Effective People - Stephen R. Covey
7) The Six Sigma Way - Peter Pande, Robert Neuman, Roland Cavanagh
8) The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fall - Clayton Christiansen
9) The Essential drucker - Peter F. Drucker
10) Competing for the Future - Gary Hamel, C.K. Prahalad
11) Good to Great: Why Some Companies make the Leap...and some others Don't - James Collins
Other:
1) The Moon is a Harsh Mistress - Robert A Heinlein
2) Chronicle of a death foretold - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
3) Tortilla Flat - John Steinbeck
4) Complete Poems of T.S. Eliot
5) The Dispossesed - Ursula Guin
6) Left Hand of Darkeness - Ursula Guin
7) My Son's Father - Dom Moraes
8) Harpo Speaks - Harpo Marx
9) Meditations - Maurcus Aurelius, Translated by Gregory Hayes
10) A Variety of Absences: The Collected Memoirs of Dom Moraes - Moraes, Dom
11) What Should I Do With My Life? - Bronson, Po
Career development ?! (ANZ)
Richard Bolles: "What Color is Your Parachute"
Duane Brown: "Career Choice and Development"
Stephen Covey: "7 Habits of Highly Effective People"
Charles Givens: "Super Self"
Charles Handy: "The age of unreason"
Rob Parsons: "The Heart of Success"
Anthony Robbins: "Unlimited Power"
Paul Stevens: "Stop postponing the rest of your life"
Rosamund Stone Zander & Benjamin Zander: "The art of possibility"
David Boyle's reading list
Leadership, Teamwork, Corporate Excellence and Learning Organisation:
* The Fifth Discipline, Peter M. Senge
* The Fifth Discipline Field Book, Peter Senge et al
* A Force for Change, John P. Kotter
* Open Book Management, John Case
* Team Players and Teamwork, Glenn M. Parker
* Good to Great, Jim Collins
* Built to Last, Jim Collins & Jerry Porras
* The Agenda, Michael Hammer
Thinking & Problem Solving:
* The Fermi Solution, Hans Christian von Baeyer
* A History of Western Philosophy, Bertrand Russell
* Principia Mathematica to '56, Alfred North Whitehead & Bertrand
Russell (this is a short version that deals primarily with the foundations
of the logic from the original three volume set)
* A New Kind of Science, Stephen Wolfram
Quality:
* Firing on All Cylinders, Jim Clemmer
* Why Things Bite Back, Edward Tenner (not really a book on quality,
more about why things go wrong)
* For a detailed and comprehensive view of Quality, the internet is
the best (and free) source. Go to www.quality.nist.gov for info on the
Malcolm Baldridge Quality Award and www.isixsigna.com/ca/baldridge/ for a
lot of info on the intersection of six sigma and Baldridge, including an
interesting link to a site that compares the Deming framework and Baldridge.
Strategy:
* Competitive Strategy, Michael E. Porter
* Product Strategy for High-Technology Companies, Michael E. McGrath
* The Innovator's Dilemma, Clayton M. Christensen
* Total Global Strategy, George S. Yip
Marketing, Ideas, Selling:
* Guerrilla Marketing, Jay Conrad Levinson
* Jump Start Your Brain, Doug Hall
* Consultative Selling, MackHanan, James Cribbin & Herman Heiser
* A Passion for Ideas, Ed. Heinrich v. Pierer & Bolko v. Oetinger
General Business Books:
* The Portable MBA, Eliza G.C. Collins & Mary Anne Devanna
* Accounting Fundamentals for Non-Accountants, Stephen A. Moscove
My Favourite Books
Fiction:
1. The Catcher in the Rye – J.D.Salinger
2. To Kill A Mockingbird – Harper Lee
3. Atlas Shrugged – Ayn Rand
4. Fountainhead – Ayn Rand
5. Remains Of The Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
6. Jonathan Livingston Seagull – Richard Bach
7. There’s No Such Place As Far Away – Richard Bach
8. Nothing By Chance – Richard Bach
9. Roots – Alex Haley
10. English, August – Upamanyu Chatterjee
11. Anthem – Ayn Rand
12. One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest – Ken Keasey
13. Resurrection – Leo Tolstoy
14. Candide – Voltaire
15. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
16. Animal Farm – George Orwell
17. 1984 – George Orwell
18. An Equal Music - Vikram Seth
19. Theatre - Somerset W. Maugham
20. Pygmalion - Bernard Shaw
21. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
22. How Green Was My Valley - Richard Llewellyn
23. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
24. The Glass Palace - Amitav Ghosh
25. Love in the time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
26. Such a long journey - Rohinton Mistry
27. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
28. Golden Gate - Vikram Seth
29. Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
30. Sophie's Choice - William Styron
31. Of mice and men - John Steinbeck
32. The Far Pavilions - M.M. Kaye
33. Chronicle of a Death Foretold - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
34. Darkness at Noon - Arthur Koestler
35. Namesake - Jhumpa Lahiri
36. The Great Indian Novel - Shashi Tharoor
Non-Fiction:
1. Nudist on the late shift - Po Bronson
2. Freedom at Midnight – Larry Collins & Dominique LaPierre
3. Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman – Richard P. Feynman
4. Lust For Life – Irving Stone
5. The Passions Of The Mind – Irving Stone
6. The Agony and the Ecstasy - Irving Stone
7. The Monk and the riddle - Randy Komisar
8. Startup - Jerry Kaplan
9. McKinsey Way - Ethan M. Raisel
10. Two Lives - Vikram Seth
11. Winning - Jack Welch
1. The Catcher in the Rye – J.D.Salinger
2. To Kill A Mockingbird – Harper Lee
3. Atlas Shrugged – Ayn Rand
4. Fountainhead – Ayn Rand
5. Remains Of The Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
6. Jonathan Livingston Seagull – Richard Bach
7. There’s No Such Place As Far Away – Richard Bach
8. Nothing By Chance – Richard Bach
9. Roots – Alex Haley
10. English, August – Upamanyu Chatterjee
11. Anthem – Ayn Rand
12. One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest – Ken Keasey
13. Resurrection – Leo Tolstoy
14. Candide – Voltaire
15. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
16. Animal Farm – George Orwell
17. 1984 – George Orwell
18. An Equal Music - Vikram Seth
19. Theatre - Somerset W. Maugham
20. Pygmalion - Bernard Shaw
21. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
22. How Green Was My Valley - Richard Llewellyn
23. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
24. The Glass Palace - Amitav Ghosh
25. Love in the time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
26. Such a long journey - Rohinton Mistry
27. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
28. Golden Gate - Vikram Seth
29. Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
30. Sophie's Choice - William Styron
31. Of mice and men - John Steinbeck
32. The Far Pavilions - M.M. Kaye
33. Chronicle of a Death Foretold - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
34. Darkness at Noon - Arthur Koestler
35. Namesake - Jhumpa Lahiri
36. The Great Indian Novel - Shashi Tharoor
Non-Fiction:
1. Nudist on the late shift - Po Bronson
2. Freedom at Midnight – Larry Collins & Dominique LaPierre
3. Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman – Richard P. Feynman
4. Lust For Life – Irving Stone
5. The Passions Of The Mind – Irving Stone
6. The Agony and the Ecstasy - Irving Stone
7. The Monk and the riddle - Randy Komisar
8. Startup - Jerry Kaplan
9. McKinsey Way - Ethan M. Raisel
10. Two Lives - Vikram Seth
11. Winning - Jack Welch
Interesting Softwares
Here I list some of the interesting softwares I intend to try/have tried/would recommend:
1) Copernicus Desktop Search: Desktop search that is supposed to be good, especially because of its low/optimized CPU and memory utilization. Check it out here
2) Webaroo: Browse the net while beig offline! Created by an IIT Bombay incubated-startup, it involves downloading their s/w and "webpacks". Available for laptops and mobils devices. Would be great if they had a webpack for Wikipedia ! Check it out here
1) Copernicus Desktop Search: Desktop search that is supposed to be good, especially because of its low/optimized CPU and memory utilization. Check it out here
2) Webaroo: Browse the net while beig offline! Created by an IIT Bombay incubated-startup, it involves downloading their s/w and "webpacks". Available for laptops and mobils devices. Would be great if they had a webpack for Wikipedia ! Check it out here
First Blog
Ok...so here is my nth attempt at trying to maintain a blog. Hope this is more successful than all my earlier attempts in maintaining a website or a blog.
The intention is to maintain a diary of all the interesting things i think about and browse about...rather than make this a channel for my thoughts to the world. Dont really care about what the world thinks of me...I think.
Intention of this blog.
I intend to blog random thoughts, articles that I have read, bits of data and information I have gathered over time, my favourites, etc. etc. as part of this blog.
i.e. make it a true diary, as blogs are (were?) intended to be !
Happy reading !!!
The intention is to maintain a diary of all the interesting things i think about and browse about...rather than make this a channel for my thoughts to the world. Dont really care about what the world thinks of me...I think.
Intention of this blog.
I intend to blog random thoughts, articles that I have read, bits of data and information I have gathered over time, my favourites, etc. etc. as part of this blog.
i.e. make it a true diary, as blogs are (were?) intended to be !
Happy reading !!!
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