Charles Schultz's philosophy & future of the Internet

Came across this nice article: http://www.rogerknapp.com/inspire/schultzphilosophy.htm.
I think this article very aptly represents the recent trends of the Internet. Of late, social networking sites & sites with user developed content such as photos & blogs have been the most popular sites.
So, what has led to this demand for such community based sites? I figure out sociological & technological reasons for this.
Technologically, as memory becomes cheaper, websites can host more users for much lesser costs.
But at a sociological level, I think its our growing passion to share our world with our near & dear ones and also our excitement to know more about the people we care.

tips for a good presentation

1st week of International Student Orientation Week just finished today & the air is filled with so much competition.
There was a presentation competition where all the students were split into teams of 4 (mine being the last team had 3 members), each team had to give a presentation on a chosen topic. My team's team presentation on Operation/Supply Chain Mgmt. was a big disappointment. Although we had some very good visuals & had aimed at reducing text in the ppt to as low as possible, the judgment panel had a Logistics Prof who grilled us thoroughly.
Although, we didn't quite manage to get to the finals (any surprises here ??), I did managed to compile few tips that need to considered when giving future presentations. This was a collection of feedbacks that our & other teams received from the panel. (after adding Soumak's contribution)

When preparing the presentation:

1)1^st word of each bullet should be of same case (upper case/lower case).

2) Show slide number, date & ppt title on each title.

3) Diagrams must be easy to read, non-cluttering & not confusing. If too big, cut it & split it to the next slide.

4) To impress the subject expert, try to cover the future trends of the topic.

5) Use humor, but let not the humor be criticizing the topic.

6) Ensure there's a logical structure to your presentation. For instance, it must have a contents & conclusion section.

7) Do not have too much text.

During the presentation:

1) Dress code should be uniform for all the team members.

2) Support a team member if he’s stuck at a particular point.

3) For guys, having hands in the pocket is a big no-no, since it may seem that the presenters are bit laid back for the occasion.

4) Beware of the time constraint.

5) During the presentation, don’t “read out” what’s on the slide. Don’t turn back to the display to refer to it. Look at your laptop in your front to get clues if you are stuck.

6) Its better to not move around. Too movement may distract the audience.

I'm sure you'll have more tips that could be added. Please add them as comments, I'll consolidate them.

Update on Sep 9th, 2009:
Here's an interested read on this topic: LINK

a week that was..

phew..
what a week this was..
It was in this week that I've embarked on a new life of sorts. New place, new role, new friends...
With so many new changes, there are bound to have quite a few commotions.

Since I reached Toronto a week later than most of the Indian guys, accommodation turned out to be quite an hurdle.
On a particular day, Ramit & I walked almost 20 kms & 5 hrs around the Downtown area but in vain.
I was temporarily staying in my dad's friend, Nagaraj uncle's house. I finally managed to move in with Pavan, Vinay & Sid.

Getting adjusted to Canada takes some time. Back in India, we are so used to chaos that a sudden wave of discipline & orderliness takes you by surprise.
Say you were crossing a Toronto road, you see a car speeding towards you, you wait for it to pass, but as the car nears you, the car waits for you to pass. Both you & the driver are at confusion for few moments, waiting for each other to pass.

Traffic rules here are pedestrian friendly. Well, its supposed to be the same in India too, but here the difference here is that the rules are strictly adhered.

Toronto is a superb city, innumerable number of skyscrapers, interspersed with older Victoria styled structures dating back to late 1800's, wide roads, beautiful boulevards all will leave awestruck.

In the past week, I've seen almost all the cars I used to dream about since childhood. Here's an easy way to see you fav car in Toronto: 1) think of ur favorite car: a Ferrari, Porsche, Lamborghini or a Mustang 2) go to Downtown 3) close your eyes for 30 secs & 4) slowly open your eyes. You'll see that car speeding past you.

TTC is another great feature in Toronto. Trians come, people get down, people get in, a music indicates the train is leaving & the train leaves. Everything happening in perfect precision. So much precision that sometimes life may feel too mechanical for us Indians..

I must say, the way we associate Germany to engineering or Italy to design or Japan to technology, we must associate desciple & order to Canada.. :)

One more thing we Indians need to get adjusted to is deal with an array of coins. Its coins & coins wherever you go.. $2, $1, 50c & so on till 1c. It'll fill ur purse so much that in the end you'll be forced to donate some of them.

Overall, its a beautiful city, so much to explore & learn. Hope to buy a camera soon & capture some of the snapshots here.



P.S. This article was started on Saturday evening but due to all sorts of pressures, was able to complete only on Tuesday.

a glutton's dream come true..

Just have look at my this week's (last week in India) schedule. It's sure gonna make the glutton in u get mouth-watering dreams.. :)
Tuesday dinner -- @ Vinay's house. As usual Raj had come late, but was trying to pass the blame on me & Machi. But we are well-versed with his ways. The food was typical South-Indian Vysya fare. His mom had taken pains to prepare some wonderful coconut obbattus. Plus there were lots of other sweets, tasty fried items, sweetened sambar, etc & ending with the typical serving of puffed rice!!

Wednesday lunch -- treat given by me to my Alcatel-Lucent team. Dominos Pizzas with various delicious toppings. Had to make a hard negotiation with the cashier to get a decent discount.

Wednesday dinner -- @ my cousin's house. His wife had prepared some amazing kababs, chicken chops & mutton curry; all giving a terrific combination to the ragi mudde.

Thursday dinner -- @ Raj's house. As usual, he was late, making all of us furious. But our furiousity was dampened soon by his mother's cooking. Although non-veg was the main course, his mother had taken pains to prepare vegetarian food for the vegitarian parties of our gang: Vinay & Manja. For the non-vegitarians, we had chilly chicken & mutton fry & a very thin mutton curry that my mom occassionally prepares. In no time, each of us had downloaded 2 generous servings of rice..

Friday lunch -- gave a treat to my Sasken team. Yet again, it was a pizza treat, since nothing seemed to fit my "tight budget". We got a good number of pizzas & everyone were quite filled in the end..

Friday dinner -- @ Manja's house. His mom comes closest to my mom in terms of taste. I reason out this could be because both of them hail from the same geographical area of South Eastern Karnataka (his mom is from Kolar & mine is from Devanahalli, just 40 kms apart) & hence a similar use of ingredients & preparation methods.
Ok, analysis apart, his mom had prepared wonderful dal obbattu & jamoon (esp. for Raj & Vinay). As such, even I am not a very big connoisuer of obbattu, but its preparation is such a tedious & pain-staking process that you need to eat few as gratitude for the cook. The dal rasam was so delicious that I helped myself with some more servings of rice.

Tomorrow's breakfast is in my home. Mom has said she'll prepare Vegetable Palav & jamoon.

So this was my eating itinery for this week. Now, dont u think this wld make anybody's mouth water?

Before I end this write-up, my heartfelt thanks to all my friends & cousins & their families for showing so much love & affection towards me.

a movie that leaves u thinking

Yesterday I got a send-off party from my long-time PESIT buddies: Prashant, Veda, Harsha & Khalid.
Despite the largely looming terror threat in Bengaluru, we decided to go for the much awaited movie, Taj Mahal.

Few of the songs on the promos were good & the posters indicated that it was pretty quality stuff. But half of our josh was down when Veda indicated that the feedback was lukewarm. We've seen this pattern reccuring: good promos--all of our spirits are high, can't wait to get a First Day First Show ticket---later, u come out right after the interval, as though you are escaping from a prison.. :) I was thinking we are heading for such a disaster once again..

Overall, the movie seemed to be like a ODI between the good-parts of the movie & the bad-parts. The initial opening was a movie-crazy young boy running away from home fearing his father & finding a diary of the protagonist. This seemed like story telling with-in a story that was well presented. Then the bad-part took over: which place on earth had a number plate with S-143?? Switzerland??
Then following that, the hero puncturing his bike to wish good morning to our heroine (sakkat hot Pooja Gandhi) & ending off with an insequential romantic song. This was enough to put us off.
Then the movie continues with many absurdities, such as: the heroine, who has never talked to the hero & admittedly doesn't even know his name, agrees to go for coffee with him!! Unfortunately, it seems, the director didn't know that real girls in this real world aren't that liberal :(
Its only the occassional dialogs by Rangayana Raghu that really keeps the spirits up at some places.

But the highlight of the movie, that makes it worth wathching is the metal pressure that the hero goes through in choosing between his extreme love for the heroine & his duties & responsibilites towards his parents who have have sold their everything & living in extreme poor conditions so that their son studies well & becomes an engineer.
Its isn't that difficult for any of the guys (esp. me at this juncture of my life) to draw an analogy to the hero's state that really makes the impact on all of the guys.
The parents fetch more brownie points by forgiving the son who comes back & surrenders himself in front of this telling his bad state & parents accept him for what he is & forgives him. This again, seems to be a gentle reminder that parents, from the times of the Prable of the Prodigal Son, are a trove of forgiveness.

At the end of the movie, you really start thinking what did the hero achieve, after all?
Couldn't have he lived happier if he hadn't gone out of his small village or hadn't fallen in a wierd love with that girl?
This's what makes the movie a memorable one, even thought there are quite a few absurd, vague & far-fatched scenes.
Here's a link to one of my fav songs in the movie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYs-InGHMtQ&feature=related

m-commerce - the way people do business in 2015

I attended a session at Sasken on mobile Value Added Services. One of the most important avenues for growth for mobile VAS will be m-commerce. The speaker, Mr. Raja Chetlur shared with us some interesting prospects on this topic.

So, what is m-commerce? Suppose you are browzing through e-Bay with your new iPhone. You found a diamond necklace that you want to gift to your girl friend (obviously you are a rich guy). You just click on "add it to my cart".
The rest is taken care of e-Bay & your mobile service provider. Your service provider will act as your credit-card company, pays for that item & provides your billing address to where your item will be shipped to.
Thats how simple shopping is going to be in future.

Basically, m-commerce will be a spin-off from e-commerce, powered by broadband wireless speeds, Web 2.0 technology & new service delivery platforms like IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem).

M-commerce seems to be the next ultra-cool app after SMS. But when looked at 2nd time, you'll realize there are more subtle things associated with m-commerce than what meet the eye. When your service provider pays for your product, it assumes a financial role, a role that's currently done by banks such as Citi, ICICI, etc.
As m-commerce grows rapidly, the banking biggies are certain to have a look at SP as possible acqusition targets. This development might revolutionize telecom space. Until now, it was just telcos acquiring or merging with other telcos, but with m-commerce even banking companies will get into the picture.

So, interesting times lie ahead.. :)

A million $$$ question

Dear friend,

Here’s a million dollar question to you.

Suppose you suddenly hit a jackpot of Rs 20 lakh. You spend Rs. 10 lakh lavishly on all your favorite things & now you wanna invest the remaining amount that would give you a good return on investment.

Let me try to help you with this problem.

Consider some of the options you have:

1) Fixed deposits – this is a traditional investment plan with low returns & low risks involved. This lacks the challenge that we seek whenever we make investments.

2) Real estate – this is in pretty bad shape now, esp. around Bengaluru & as it is you may nothing for Rs. 10 lakh these days :)

3) Stock market – with soaring oil prices & inflation, there doesn’t seem to be much in favor of investing in stocks. There are predictions of US Presidential elections reviving the market. But as we have seen, Indian market seems to be sometimes aloof of global cues. So it might be an unpredictable investment.

At this juncture, let me provide you a new option. Say suppose, I need Rs 10 lakh for my MBA course & I request you to lend some money from your Rs. 10 lakh reserve. If you do so, I’ll pay you back your initial investment amount with additional incentives after my MBA. Would you do this investment?

All of us have heard that the best form of investment is education. But of course the primary benefactor of education will be the student himself. Can there be some form of mechanism where even others can obtain monetary profit from your education?

Lets forget for sometime that we are friends & see my proposition from a purely investment perspective. Here is the description of the returns I’ll give:

After passing out from my MBA & obtaining a job, I’ll set aside half of my salary for my yearly expenses (including income tax payment), a quarter for paying back my student loan and the remaining quarter as payment for my “education investors”.

Here are some objective facts that might help you in your decision making:

1) Placement rate in Rotman School of Management (the school I’ll be attending) with-in 1st 3 months : 94%

2) Average salary: CAD $ 120,000, highest: CAD $ 300,000, lowest: CAD $ 50,000

3) Average work-experience: 4 yrs, my experience: 4 yrs.

4) Average GMAT score: 640, my score: 720. Please note that GMAT score can’t be directly correlated with academic performance. Moreover I happen to be from a very competitive Indian IT pool which will have much higher average GMAT score (my estimation is ~700)

5) An important macro-economic consideration you’ll need to make is the increasing trend of CAD $ against the Indian Rupee. Would it continue for few more years?

Let me explain your returns with an example. Say you’ve invested Rs 1 lakh. After 2 yrs, I get a salary of CAD $120,000 (i.e Rs 48 lakh @ Rs 40 per CAD $). I have allotted 25% of my salary for returning to my investors which will amount to Rs 12 lakh. Since you’ve invested Rs 1 lakh, you’ll get 10% of 12 lakh, i.e Rs 1.2 lakh. So your return on investment for 2 yrs is 20%.

You’ll be entitled for more if my salary is more & lesser if lesser. But you may lose some money if my salary is less than CAD $ 100,000.

So my million dollar question is, are you ready to invest in my education? If yes, how much?

Please add your answers/doubts/suggestions in the comments section below.

N.B. some of the numbers mentioned below may be deviated from actual figures.