January 2007 in Review

The first month of 2007 ends today which means only 11 more months to complete all the New Year Resolutions. Here is what happened on the technology front.

1. I started writing my novel on Zoho Wiki. I hope to publish it sometime during this summer. Semi-autobiographical, it is a collection of stories and anecdotes. I planned to use JotSpot for this purpose, but I am tired of waiting this long. How many businesses have shut down their doors for months not serving their customers? What can I say - Google blew it with JotSpot.
   
   
2. My target of one post per day will be achieved for January with this post. I did cheat by making up for the days I didn't do anything by posting several on some days. But I may have to continue like that because it is easier to keep track when I try to match the days in a month. Many thanks to Microsoft Live Writer which has made it easy for me to write in fits and starts. Technorati has been great in knowing about incoming links and visiting those websites. It provides the information faster than Google Alerts.
   
   
3. I like the new Skype add-in (Unyte) which allows desktop and application sharing. So far, I have been using Goto Meeting and, previously, Raindance. Goto Meeting has the advantage of not requiring users to install a separate application. But Skype is really convenient if both sides communicating are in fact Skype users. Today, I saw something in Yahoo! Messenger that smelled like a desktop sharing add-in, but I didn't have the time to explore that.
   
   
4. Technology addicts like me hardly get any exercise because we are so glued to the screen pressing "j" on Google Reader. My friend Babu Sathish told me about an Yoga exercise that involves coordinated stretching and breathing. After a few days, I feel really refreshed and full of energy. Of course, I have to warn you - the first couple of days will really be painful if you have been out of practice. Babu also explained to me that it is easier to do these simple exercises and have them as part of one's daily routine for years than it is to go to the gym a fixed number of times a week. I agree with him.
   
   
5. Most people seem to dismiss Orkut as something only popular in Brazil. But I am amazed at how many friends from India I have re-discovered in the past month using Orkut. My feeling is that Orkut is slowly growing and it will hit critical mass soon among the Indian community - which could mean a huge impact considering the large Indian population and Indian Diaspora.
   
   
6. Learning to use wireless in new ways: Bring the laptop to the kitchen and run through the reading to-do list while cutting cucumbers or peeling potatoes. Reply to emails in between commercials. Google a new word or phrase heard on TV and learn to stay away from urban legends and hoaxes.

January was really cold in NH - a bitter change from the unexpectedly warm December. But staying indoors helped in getting some work (electronic & paper) done. February is a short month. Hope to do something different and interesting!

Technorati tags: January review, Zoho Wiki, JotSpot, Google reader, Live Writer, Unyte, Skype, Yoga

Internet Video and Audiences

First of all, thanks to Robert Scoble for putting me on his link blog. Considering the recent controversy regarding the Intel videos, I thought an analysis of video blogs in terms of its potential audience may be an interesting topic to think and write about. Videos are a big hit on the Internet - the recent acquisition of YouTube has only fueled this trend. But every format has its challenges.

From my personal experience, here are the challenges faced by content providers who use video as their output:

1. Video places a greater demand on the time and effort of the individual. While a person is watching a video, they can rarely do any other work with their eyes or ears. Only activities that can be performed non-consciously like eating or exercising can be done at the same time. This means
   
   
   • It is very difficult to see longer lengths of video at work. And I mean this for both the junior team member as well as the top level executive. The former cannot be seen watching videos while they are supposed to be doing their work. And the latter is busy with activities like meetings, emails, phone conversations, etc.
     
     Compare this with a text posting. It is easy to browse through text while talking to someone on the phone. You can subscribe to RSS feeds in your email and read them along with other emails.
     
     
   • It is not possible to see video while driving (duh!). And that is if the video can be downloaded. If it is being streamed, you cannot take it with you on a device to view while commuting on a train or so.
     
     
   • And don't even attempt to see videos (especially technical videos) at home without making your family mad at you. Here is how it goes: You are sitting with your partner on the couch and watching TV. Now try switching on your laptop and playing a video. And yes, you can go to your work area and watch videos there. But now you are adding the video-watching time to the "other work" you are bringing home. Soon, you have no life.
     
     
2. Videos on the Internet are very different from videos on TV. I am not talking about image quality, size or resolution. When you watch a video on TV, the only input device you have is a remote which is primarily used to enhance the watching experience (volume, contrast, etc.) Also there is nothing else playing at the same time on the TV that can divert your attention. When you watch Internet video on a computer sitting at a desk, you typically have many other applications (email client, blog reader, instant messaging) that make your experience interrupt-driven. The input devices also act as a temptation to drive you to do something different. Hence the "stickiness" factor is missing.
   
   
3. An Internet video typically does not come with a trailer or packaging that helps you identify what you are getting into, unlike a TV program or DVD. A text post has the benefit of quickly browsing the entire text by a simple drag of the mouse. To get a feel of the Internet video, you need to watch at least several seconds or a few minutes.
   
   
4. If a person likes the information in a video and wants to share it with other people, it is difficult to email that video to people as an attachment unless it is very short. They must provide a link. It is not easy to ensure that the person actually saw the video. With text, there is a greater hit ratio that people saw at least the general content of the message - such as bolded text.
   
   

How can this be remedied?

1. Provide different formats for the same content - a transcript and a downloadable audio file along with the video file. Each format attracts a different audience. Some content consumers (i.e., audience) may even use all three. They may start with the transcript, find that perhaps it is too long and download the audio file to their iPod. They find that the audio is about a medical procedure which encourages the person to go back and view the video file. The reverse may happen - someone sees the video of a speech and doesn't quite get a sentence or two and can refer back to the transcript.
   
   To do this is HARD WORK and TIME-CONSUMING. But it will pay off.
   
   
2. Internet videos must be "rich" to keep the user engaged. For example, using shorter takes and incorporating music can make the experience better. It is also useful while doing an interview to use other footage instead of showing the person who is talking. Using strong emotions like humor, fear or excitement can help users stay on while the video runs.
   
   Once again, this is HARD WORK. In addition, it also requires good video taking, editing and mixing skills
   
   
3. If you have a large video, break it down into manageable pieces. I would suggest using 2-4 minute segments. Make sure that the first segment is really interesting and inviting. And do the same for the rest too. Do an usability test with people to understand if it can be bettered.
   
   
4. Provide a synopsis of the video and tell people why they must watch it. I am ready to watch funny cats on YouTube all day long because I already know what will happen. But if I have to see an interview with the CEO of a startup, I need to know why it is important that I tune in. Should I listen to him because his company is a good place to invest in? Or is it a potential vendor, partner, supplier, competitor?
   
   
5. Allow users to simultaneously email the transcript and link to the video. Use a video format that will not require end users to do something new with their browsers.
   
   

Different formats of communication co-exist. For example, newspapers were not made obsolete by radio. Same for radio by TV. And TV by the Internet. Each has its unique advantages and disadvantages. The challenge is to understand the limitations and rise above that.

If video blogs find an obstacle in constraints of time, effort and viewing habits of end users, then it must accept those constraints and work to turn them into its advantage. It is futile to fight reality.

[UPDATE: I remove the word "formats" from the heading as it made it seem as if I was talking about the technology like Flash, AVI, MPEG, etc.]

Technorati tags: Video Blogs, Scoble, video format constraints and remedies

A Malayalam Blog and Kerala Information Technology

One of my college juniors, Sijith Nair, who is now in Los Angeles, has started writing his blog http://kuttanskadhakal.blogspot.com in Malayalam. Great Work, Sijith. This is the first non-English blog I am reading and Sijith's narration of his travel difficulties in Paris makes it very interesting. BTW, use Firefox to view the blog as I am having difficulties viewing it in Internet Explorer.

For those who are unfamiliar with Malayalam, it is the language of Kerala, the state lying below Karnataka (read "the state where Bangalore is") state on the southern tip of India. The state is an aberration in India - it has 100% literacy and is the most educated (percentage-wise) state in India. It is also governed by an elected Communist government (one of the three states in India which has a sizeable Communist presence) - not that it matters as economic policies are set by the Central (Federal) government.

The state is densely populated. Past lack of good employment opportunities for educated youth led to massive emigration to other states in India and countries, primarily the Persian Gulf (or Arabian Gulf, based on your point of view) and the United States. A running joke among Malayalees and Keralites is that if every Malayalee comes back to Kerala from all over the world, there will not be any standing space there. The physicist George Sudharsan and writer Arundhati Roy are two famous people from Kerala.

The Information Technology industry has been slow to set up shop in Kerala, but things have changed in the past few years. Trivandrum (known as Thiruvananthapuram) and Cochin (or Kochi) are establishing themselves as IT centers building upon good engineering talent from the nearby engineering and technology universities and colleges (CUSAT, MGU and CET). Higher education tuition fees is heavily subsidized by the government. When I completed my Masters Degree in Computer Science, I paid the equivalent of just $50 (repeat, fifty US dollars) for two years tuition. My books and daily travel cost more. However, competition for the college seats is very tough - admission is based on performance in a standardized mass entrance exam usually heavy on logic and advanced mathematics.

One of the great advantages of the state (other than high education and health levels) is its natural beauty. While Bangalore, Hyderabad and Chennai are bigger centers, they do not compare favorably with the tropical forests, and lazy backwaters in Kerala. Every drive is a scenic drive - it is green everywhere all the time. :-)

I am writing this from southern New Hampshire - another beautiful place which explodes into glorious heavenly colors when fall comes along. If you work in a scenic place, feel free to post links to pictures of your place in the comments section.

Technorati tags: Malayalam, Kerala, Information Technology, New Hampshire

Quick Review of Google Products

As most people would have, I switched over to using Google Search the first time I tried it after a recommendation from a friend. Over the years, Google has added many products to their portfolio and I have tried to use many of them. Here is a quick review of my experiences with each product. The order of the products is according to a combination of my satisfaction as well as my usage level.

• Search: Still the leader with the more relevant search results. Others like Ask, Yahoo! and Live lag behind in number of sites indexed, frequency of indexes and search results returned. Sites like Clusty and Krugle offer variations and search niches, but not general search to topple Google. Google has other search features like Calculator and Weather that come in handy. I typically use the search across Images (my second choice: Altavista), Maps (second and third choice: Yahoo! Maps & MapQuest), News (I also like Techmeme), Groups (I use Yahoo! Groups, but search on Google Groups) and, less frequently, Video (YouTube is better for content, but Google Video should be better for "searching" videos in future). Search is pretty much a Google monopoly.
  
• Google Reader: Since its latest incarnation, it has become the must-use blog reader. Some notes on that here. I actually favor feeds coming to an online email client, but neither Gmail nor Yahoo! Mail does a good job of this.
  
• Google Analytics: It is easy to incorporate the functionality in your website or blog and the reports are really great. There is still room for improvement as some of the reports could have greater drill-down capability. Basically, the problem is that as you gain a greater knowledge of the functionality in Google Analytics, you start wanting to slice and dice the data in different ways and the tool starts showing its limitations. Still, it is the best accessible tool around.
  
• Google Desktop: While I think of myself as pretty organized in terms of files and emails, Google Desktop search increases productivity and effectiveness several times by locating old documents and communication easily. The sidebar allows me to see important information at a glance, launch searches and keep track of To-Do items. However, searching is not integrated into Windows Explorer and the existing gadget inventory probably needs to be improved. I haven't really tried other tools because Google Desktop does most of what it needs to do really well.
  
• Google Calendar: Very user-friendly application. Since I am using Microsoft Outlook professionally, it is a challenge to use it regularly. I suppose they should build in some synching feature. Better than Yahoo! Calendar, which like many other of their products, has been dead for years.
• Google Docs & Spreadsheets: The product does a good job of allowing users to create online documents and spreadsheets and there is no competition from Yahoo or Microsoft. It is still a bit clunky and since it is not really anywhere near the desktop Microsoft Office product, it has limited use at this moment. Frankly, I would like to see this product integrated with Google Page Creator and JotSpot.
• Google Alerts: Not something unique that cannot be copied, but it is very useful and does its job perfectly.
• Gmail: Gmail turned the email market upside down when it launched with gigabytes of storage. But other email clients (especially Yahoo! Mail) have caught up with newer features and Gmail doesn't seem to be innovating much these days. I still use it sometimes because it allows me to store Google Talk chat sessions automatically. It is still much better than Hotmail (or Live Mail) which has no clue about spam filtering or even basic user navigation.
• Picasa: I am using it to manage and edit all my photos. I haven't used the online sharing service - still using Yahoo! Photos. Probably should give Picasa Web Albums or Flickr a try.
• Google Talk: Skype and Yahoo! Messenger are way ahead in features and looks. But Google Talk has the advantage of being integrated with Google Desktop Sidebar and easily saving chat sessions into Gmail. In recent times, I have experienced performance problems with Google Talk when talking with people in India.
• Google Book Search: I think the functionality is good, but I haven't really used it all that much. There are too many books to read and too little time.
• Google Earth: Again, a great fun tool, but not much time to play around with it. Google Maps serves most day-to-day purposes.
• Froogle: Useful to know the price ranges of goods. I have not bought a single item from Froogle yet, but probably I am a more cautious and research-oriented online shopper.
• Toolbar: This was something nice to have when it came out. When IE came out, the search box allowed integration with Google Search, which removed a lot of the rationale behind the Google toolbar. The new IE interface also made it less attractive to reduce the viewing area by installing a toolbar. So I got rid of it. However, Yahoo! Bookmarks Beta has convinced me to install me to get the Yahoo! Beta toolbar, but as you can read from my previous post, I am questioning whether moving to that product was such a good idea.
• Google Co-op: Creating a custom search engine was a great touch by Google and I duly installed one for my website and blog. The only problem, I realized, was that it does not index the website in real-time and so it takes a few hours/days to get the content made searchable. Technorati Search is much better in this regard, but right now, it only works for blogs.
• Google Catalogs, Checkout, Directory, SketchUp, Translate, etc: Rarely used these and other products not named explicitly. This is primarily because I don't use the functionality itself rather than there being a competing product.

The above is not a comprehensive list of all Google products just because I don't have the need to use some of the products, including stuff like Google Suggest in Japanese. Google seems to be building a portfolio of products just like Yahoo! has done. Their key strength will continue to be in search and I think by leveraging that capability of being able to locate relevant information in any data in any format, their products will grow.

Integration between various products has been taking place, though very slowly in my opinion and in some cases, not effectively done (like Google Reader and Gmail). Providing users with the ability to access all the products they are using is also done in a rather clumsy way - a vertical list of big icons under My Account - instead of the Home Page. I am not sure why this is - possibly the lack (I am just guessing here) of a Google Product Integration team is partly responsible here.

Technorati tags: Google, Search, Google reader, Google analytics

Yahoo! Bookmarks Beta

A few weeks back, I complained that Yahoo! Bookmarks was the lowest on my ratings of good bookmarking software. I learnt since that there was a beta version available. The initial good impression it conveyed convinced me enough to move all my bookmarks into it (from IE and Live Favorites) and also install the Yahoo! beta toolbar. Until a few hours ago, I was going to write a good review about it, but as I started using the application more, that feeling started to diminish until I finally hit the "screen of death".

Application error - symfony application failed to start properly"

I am not sure what caused the failure, but maybe it comes up after 90 minutes of using the application. :-)

Anyway, here's a quick look at what I liked, first:

• The beta toolbar has a favorites dropdown that displays the favorites in a tree structure of folders. There are menu items to add a link to any folder directly. A frequently used section provides easy access to the most recently visited pages.
• Yahoo! bookmarks supports both folders and tags and allows organizing by either one.
• There are 4 different views for the bookmarks - two of which show a thumbnail impression of the website. [One problem though is that some sites do not display the thumbnail image immediately.]
• You can type your own description.
• There is Move, Merge, Delete and Rename functionality for the folders.
• The Bookmark functionality integrates into the Internet Explorer context menu.

What I didn't like:

• The site crashing - I am still not able to access it, although I can get to my bookmarks through the toolbar. Hopefully somebody on the Yahoo! Bookmarks product team is reading this and fixes it.
• There are 5 textboxes for typing tags. Why not just have one long textbox and allow the user to separate the tags by commas? That is the standard on most sites.
• I cannot change the URL when I try to edit the bookmark.
• There is no way to customize how many bookmarks appear in a view. Right now, 20 bookmarks appear by default. If I have 21 bookmarks in a folder, I have to click Next to get there.
• When I merge a folder with another, the original folder should go away. Now I have to delete it manually.
• No drag-and-drop functionality for moving folders.
• No right-click on a folder to perform various functionality. Now I have to click on the folder, wait for it to finish loading and then click Edit.
• The lack of right-click functionality makes it really difficult to organize a folder full of unrelated bookmarks. In such a case, I want to delete some of them, move some of them and rename some of them. But each time, I have to keep using the buttons.
• If I want to edit a bookmark, I have to first select its checkbox and click Edit. Why not have an icon against each bookmark to make it easier? Since I cannot edit multiple bookmarks at the same time, this doesn't make any sense. Also how about a Delete button/icon against each bookmark, while you are at it?
• If I want to create a folder within a folder, it makes me choose the parent folder again although I am inside the folder.
• The exported file from Live Favorites didn't get imported. I had to import it into IE, export it out and then import it back into Yahoo! Bookmarks.
• Like Live Favorites, Yahoo! Bookmarks Beta also has the ridiculous feature of using a confirmation message on the screen itself instead of using a standard JavaScript confirmation box. 99% of the time, I really want to delete something and to have to wait for the message to appear because of a server round-trip is irritating.
• The site is slow.

Here is an advice to the testers of this product: Test it with real data with hundreds of bookmarks and at least tens of folders and tags. Try re-organizing the bookmarks into a new set of folders. Then you will understand how difficult it becomes.

In spite of my difficulties, I was still willing to spend the effort to re-organize the bookmarks because the Beta toolbar makes it really convenient once the initial setup is done. However, there is very little cost to leaving a bookmarking site (unlike an email web application) and joining another because of the ease of export and import. So Yahoo! should do a better job here before they come out of beta.

Technorati tags: Yahoo! Bookmarks Beta, Live Favorites, symfony application error

More on Balance

A few days back, I praised the concept of balance in this post. But in December, I said that "balance is difficult."

Did I totally, completely lose it? :-)

Well, actually, there were 2 separate points I was trying to make:

1. One must prioritize certain values and ends over others. Trying to achieve everything at the same time is impossible because everyday each person is faced with choices on how to use his or her time, money and effort.
   
2. Any activity can be executed in different ways - each method has its advocates. If a person strongly believes that only one way is the right way, he or she may become blind to possible problems with that approach.

As an example of the first situation, there are many goals that I may have: Good health, quality time with my family, lots of friends, writing a novel, visiting places all over the world, helping the poor and the sick. All of these goals are worthwhile, but I have limited resources to achieve them. If I don't prioritize, I may not do any one of them properly. But if I do set the importance of each goal in relation to the other, I may be able to achieve at least some of them.

Now, let us suppose I do choose to place a high priority on good health. If I spend too little effort on that, then I will not be able to achieve my goal. On the other hand, if I spend too much time on health-related activity, I will be getting increasingly diminished returns from that additional effort. Hence there is a need to balance the effort.

Similarly, in software development, there are goals: High quality, low cost and quick delivery. It is important to prioritize them so that the team can focus on what is important. The means to achieve each goal - process, tools, people - have to be balanced. Also, as I mentioned, in some cases, an extreme case is valid. For instance, if you are delivering mission-critical software, high quality is paramount and hence it may be appropriate and necessary to spend heavily on very structured and rigid processes, huge teams with specialized personnel and expensive design, production and testing tools. A project of a similar scale (using an archaic metric like LOC), but of less critical nature may need 5% of that expense. The point is that: The situation defines what is important and how to balance the merits and demerits of different solutions or approaches to a problem.

I am now reading "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" - I had read it about 10 years ago and it has been well worth reading it again. The writing is superb, as are the stories and anecdotes. I mention it because Stephen Covey talks about P/PC (Production / Production Capability) balance. His point is that one must balance the ability to produce with the actual production. If a manager only focuses on short-term results (production), in the long run, the company will go out of business as it has failed to invest in itself. And if he or she only focuses on processes and tools to the detriment of production, the company will again go bankrupt as it has nothing to run on.

So, in conclusion, prioritization is necessary to understand the order of how things have to be done. It is necessary to understand what qualities must be paid higher attention when doing a particular task. Balance is necessary so that we spend enough resources (not too little and not too much) on the prioritized activities.

Technorati tags: Balance, Prioritization, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, P/PC

Review of Scoble's Book

I recently finished reading the book "Naked Conversations" by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel. As an introduction to the various facets of business blogging, it fulfils its purpose. People who have already read "Blog!" (by Kline and Burstein) and "Permission Marketing" (by Seth Godin) will be familiar with some of the ideas expressed in it. Most avid blog readers and news followers will be familiar with a lot of the content - so for them, I would suggest skimming (rather than reading) the book for useful information.

The book starts with explaining about the growing importance of blogging in today's business environment. While people who write or read blogs comprise a small minority of the population, nevertheless, they are a vocal and influential minority. Like "Blog!", the book uses several examples of bloggers and their experiences and thoughts. One of the key differences is that "Naked Conversations" covers business blogging only and not culture and politics.

The authors discuss how organizational and national cultures can influence the prevalence of blogging. For example, the French blog more than Germans because the latter apparently dislike talking about themselves. There are more blogs at Microsoft and Sun than Apple and Google. The book suggests that the latter two companies, while highly respected for their innovation, may have a less open culture than people are led to believe.

My personal opinion is that this opinion about company environments may not necessarily be an accurate assessment. Google is currently the No. 1 employer to work for. Its brand is universally recognized and the perks are amazing. I don't think that most reasonable employees would want to alienate their co-workers and managers by washing the company's dirty linen in public. When you have a great thing going, why ruin it? Secondly, Google has a reputation for listening and acting on consumer feedback. It is highly probable that the way internal employee feedback is handled does not create a situation where people have to blog about the company to get someone to listen.

I was not very convinced that public blogs are a good forum to have such conversations within a company. Scoble was famous for making Microsoft seem more down-to-earth, but then Microsoft had a bad reputation to lose. Companies should have internal mechanisms to listen to employee concerns - if someone has to resort to public airing of grievances to draw attention, then something is wrong. Having a public conversation introduces very unique personality dynamics like ego into the discussion.

In fact, this principle can also be applied to customer complaints. Regardless of how well you think of your product, consumers will have problems with using the product or aspects of your service, packaging, pricing, return policy, etc. Such information comes through various sources (service desk, email, phone, etc.) and can be handled at different points and through different means in the organization. What I am trying to say is that customers must have easier ways of getting your company to listen to your complaints than blogging about it on the Internet and then you having to react.

Scoble and Israel provide the examples of Kryptonite and Intel to show that companies should pay close attention to any negative talk in the blogosphere. That is fine, but I really wonder what real options does a company have in such situations. In the Kryptonite case, once it was proved that the locks could be picked easily, the only option for the company was to fix the problem and change the locks. Period. Lack of a quick response may have cost some goodwill, but even if they had responded quickly, they would still have to incur the cost.

The situations where responsiveness can help is when the bad news is factually incorrect or is an aberration in the company's service or products. If the company's products and services are intrinsically poor, then any response will in fact be just a bunch of PR double-speak.

In summation, it is an easy to read, introductory book to the world of business blogs. Not inspiring, but just enough to make the user want to read more about the subject - which he or she should. A final thought: I really wish the name of the book could have been different - using the current name in a web page title is a sure way to get a reader in a business setting to close the browser window 2 seconds after they view it.

Technorati tags: Robert Scoble, Shel Israel, Naked Conversations book, Kryptonite

Building the Right Team

Having the right people on your team is key to the success of your project or organization. What are the criteria to select such people? This answer may vary for different people and different organizations. One example of a framework for hiring is the 4-E and 1-P method advocated by Jack Welch.

As for me, here are the main factors that I would use to select the right people:

1. Energy and positive attitude: The person should have a good work ethic. I am not advocating a person who works at least 12 hours a day in the office. In fact, sometimes that is a sign of a person over-committing, under-prioritizing and under-delivering. An energetic person is one who is excited by the work they are doing. They bring new ideas and suggestions to improve the quality of work and life.
   
   They are positive – their first reaction to anything is “Yes, we can do it.” They energize other members of the team by spreading their enthusiasm. They like new challenges and opportunities. They have good team spirit. For them, work is its own reward and the rest is all a bonus.
   
   In case you are thinking: does such a person exist? The answer is: Yes, they do. In fact, I know several of them – some of my close friends, some current and previous employees in the companies I have worked for.
   
   
2. Logical ability and mentality to solve problems: I believe that this is a talent, not something that you can train people in. Some people are interested in solving problems. They are the ones who would gladly spend time in a jail cell if you constantly fed them with crosswords or Soduku puzzles. They have the ability to distill a problem into the simplest form possible and arrive at solutions to fix them.
   
   Why is this important? Every day in a manager’s life (and to a lesser extent, every employee’s life) is filled with conflicts, challenges and problems. A person who doesn’t like problem solving will be suffocated and strained by the daily decision making. A person who cannot eliminate unnecessary clutter in the problem and cut right to the chase will provide poor solutions to issues.
   
   
3. Candor and openness: In business, things can go wrong even with the best effort. With open, honest discussions about the problems that were encountered, it is easy to address the root causes of the problems and fix them. If the underlying issues are hidden because of some hidden agenda, then they continue to keep festering.
   
   It is effortless to work with employees who are very transparent in their dealings. It builds trust within the team. You can continuously feed greater challenges to such a person. A person who has candor will also tell you directly what mistakes you are making, even if you are his superior. This helps in your personal development. If it is a superior who is candid, then it is even better because you know that person will never go behind your back to do something against you.
   
   
4. Introspective with self-esteem: An employee who regularly does a self-evaluation honestly is on the path to self-development. Such an employee doesn’t need prodding to learn new skills or technologies. They are more open to constructive criticism about their problems and do not get defensive about mistakes they make.
   
   However, it is also necessary to maintain self-esteem and confidence in spite of one’s own defects. I have always seen that the toughest employees to work with are those who suffer from an inferiority complex. You can always get an egomaniacal employee to do something by challenging them. But employees with low self-esteem are very difficult to motivate.
   

Technorati tags: Good Hiring, Great Teams

The Learning Ladder

A useful metaphor for easier learning is the concept of the "learning ladder". Imagine a ladder where you are standing at the bottom and the top rung is your end goal. You can reach the top without much effort by climbing one rung at a time. Now imagine someone saws a few rungs in between.

Learning is easy when it is steady and consistent. By focusing on the next step in the learning process, it is easy to assimilate incremental knowledge and reinforce the existing foundation of information gained. Progress may seem slow, but one gets to experiment with the ideas at that level and know what works and doesn't work before moving to the next level.

When we see examples of great leaders (business, politics or religion), we normally focus on their present capabilities and qualities. But it is as much important to understand their journeys to their current positions including and especially how both their successes and failures have shaped their thinking and behavior. Reading biographies and autobiographies is a great way to learn these personal experiences.

The ladder metaphor also emphasizes the importance of the next step in relation to other steps. It is easier to reach the next level instead of trying to reach 2 or 3 levels up. Not that you shouldn't try, but understand that it is much more difficult and error-prone. Also, if you have chosen the right path, you know that you will reach the right destination eventually. So spend more time on your current learning instead of worrying about the end result.

When I was doing my under-graduate and graduate studies, I saw many students worrying about whether they would get a job after their studies. Although they would spend a lot of time planning for job searching, they neglected what they had to do at that present time, namely, learning their courses properly and scoring well. Focusing on the end goals and neglecting the means and process resulted in the former also being lost.

In the workplace, I have seen many people worrying about career growth while neglecting to improve their skills (personality, technology and team capability). Sometimes, such neglect does not manifest itself until the person wants to move to a senior technical role or management ranks. At that point, it is generally too late, because it is very difficult to hide ignorance by mouthing cliches or regurgitating some web article. Or, the person himself or herself finds that he or she is incapable of handling the task or responsibility and ends up failing.

One sad observation is that many times, I have seen comparisons between two people - both intelligent, but only one open to learning. A few years later, the learning person has made incredible strides over the other person in both management and technology while the other person has remained at the same spot or even regressed. Even worse, sometimes the learning person started out with less knowledge and less intelligence than the stagnant one.

It is also useful to make consistent progress by proper time management. For example, if you can only read 10 pages of a book daily, that is fine. You will complete a book like Welch's "Winning" in 40 days - that is 2 book renewals from a typical library. As you continue to do this, you will speed up and make faster progress. As the old saw goes, "Many drops make a bucket".

By all means, dream big and try to accomplish the maximum according to your potential. But do what you can to maintain the momentum. Otherwise the net result will be lower than you expect.

Technorati tags: learning, learning ladder concept, consistent progress

Helping Developing Nations

The developments in many Third World countries over the past few decades show that poor nations cannot go it alone in their development efforts. Richer nations are expected to help them. Many countries need a basic level of growth (at or above 6%) before they can see their poverty decline. These countries do not have the requisite amount of internal capital to achieve such a goal. With the advent of skewed globalization where poorer countries have little bargaining power in terms of lowering tariffs and eliminating trade barriers, they find themselves at the short end of the stick.

The basic problem in the Third World is the level of capital and production needed for sustenance. For example, in the book, "The End Of Poverty", Jeffrey Sachs gives us the example of a family that is making $100 a month using their farm goods - just enough to meet their needs. Then he shows how external conditions can either help them develop (such as better infrastructure to sell their produce or reach new markets) or lead them to penury (lack of rain, family member falling ill).

The Third World countries are in such a situation. Many of them are ravaged by factors such as diseases like AIDS, drought, unfavorable climate, etc. Their corruption and tyrannical governments are partly a result rather than the cause of such problems. To stabilize their economies, large amounts of capital is required - so that disease (fatal or dehabilitating) can be eliminated or reduced and basic infrastructure can be created. The Gates Foundation and other NGOs have recognized this and have made the elimination of killer diseases one of the major priorities. Secondly, these countries don't have the educational strength (and by extension, the legal and political framework) to take advantage of the global economy.

The reason why it is important for richer countries to help the poorer ones is very simple. We share the same planet and the same resources. For example, India and China have large populations because of poverty that results in lack of access to contraception and other medical facilities. Such large populations consume enormous resources including fuel (read "global warming"), water & food, and create massive social and political upheaval.

Poorer countries are also breeding grounds for mercenary interests, including, but not limited to terrorists, drug traders, gun runners, etc. People who make money through such activities have the power to directly or indirectly influence, control and manipulate Western governments. For example, the fact of terrorism in Afghanistan resulted in changing US defense policy and the Iraq war.

Real globalization can help. Right now, many poor countries depending on agricultural exports are thwarted by farm subsidies in Western nations. Outsourcing opponents also fail to understand how much poverty is being reduced by MNC operations in those countries while bring consumers cost benefits.

A final note: Help by richer nations doesn't just mean "money". Throwing a lot of cash at the problem without exploring the political, legal, social and geographical factors that create poverty may only translate into transient results.

Technorati tags: Poverty, Third World, education, AIDS, the end of poverty book, jeffrey sachs

High Volume of Blog Reading

Since I am an ardent fan of Google Reader, it was nice to see a good plug on it by Robert Scoble. But do read the rest: He reads 29 thousand items in 30 days. Even if that is 1 second per blog, it is 8 hours worth of reading. Looking at his blogroll, he reads blogs like Joel on Software which have non-trivial long posts. That is amazing - is that a record? I would be really interested in knowing how he is able to read so much and digest all that information.

Now, here is the kicker: Scoble also posts at the rate of 5-6 posts per day - stats as reported by Google Reader. Admittedly, some of the posts are short, trivial or personal, but, in my opinion, he has a very high percentage of relevant and informational posts. I have just completed reading "Naked Conversations" (on which I plan to write a review) and Scoble seems to be putting his advice in that book into action, especially the passion part.

His high volume of reading reminds me of a story:

There was a professor who would collect long papers from all of his students in the morning and return them with his comments in the afternoon. One of the students could not believe that he actually read all the material he received. So he inserted a sentence "I bet you don't read everything" in the middle of his paper. When he got his paper back, the comments had a sentence "Oh, yes, I do!"

I now subscribe to around 50 feeds, but some of the posts are very detailed and tough to read. I usually star them for future reading during the weekend. In addition, there are some blogs that have information that can be used as reference. I use IE bookmarking (and recently, Live Favorites) to link to items that I want to read and keep or discard. Probably will write another post on bookmarks, but right now, for me, Live Favorites (better than) IE Bookmarks (better than) Google Bookmarks (better than) Del.icio.us (better than) Yahoo! Bookmarks. Yahoo! had a decade to get it right - what were they doing?

On reading blogs, the biggest problem is perhaps not actually reading a lot of posts - it is possible to divert more time to the activity. The real issue is assimilating that information into something meaningful. Some of the information can be easily processed - like if someone provides reasons to continue doing something you are already doing OR provides reasons against doing something you have already decided not to do. Reinforcement of ideas is good, but doesn't add a lot of value.

It is more meaningful to learn something new or contrary to what you are doing now. Translating that into action is time-consuming because it involves changing personal habits or, when organization-specific, requires change management to be done carefully. Keeping a personal Task List or even creating a manifesto can help refine oneself or the organization.

In the last respect, it is very useful to remove some blog feeds periodically, especially the ones who have nothing new to say. The blogs that I really like are the ones where the author talks about different topics and writes at some length. The longer posts lays bare the writer's thoughts - Since each person is unique, such posts usually provide some new insight or idea.

Technorati tags: reading blogs, scoble, bookmarking

Experience with Google Analytics

Ever since I started my website long back, I have been interested in knowing statistics about site visitors. I have gone through different software, from using basic counters to downloading web logs and using AWStats with Perl on IIS. Last year, I switched to using Google Analytics. Recently, I also added the code to my blog using the new template customization features.

In both cases, the move has been really easy. On the website, I just had to update my XSL header file. (Aside: Although the site is ASP.NET, I use XSL templates to drive some of the common content). Blogger provided the ability to add an HTML/JavaScript "page element" where I could embed the script. All this is pretty much invisible and unobtrusive to users hitting the site. Although counters were cool when the web started, nowadays, it is mostly ignored by new visitors or interferes with the site design & look.

Google Analytics presents three different perspectives to the visitor data - Executive, Marketer and Webmaster. The Executive view (like an "executive summary") provides quick information like geographic location of visitors, top sources, keywords, contents, entrances and exits. The Marketing and Webmaster views provide a lot more detailed information with regard to these.

A detailed analysis of how to use Google Analytics is provided here by Dennis McDonald. Some of my observations and thoughts:

• There are a lot of reports - amazing, considering the fact that Google does not monetize the site using AdWords. I believe that Analytics acts as a loss leader for marketers to purchase Adwords since they can better manage their campaigns.
• The Executive views are well thought out. Many big-bang-for-the-buck changes to the website can be easily arrived at from the information provided. For example, if a high percentage of users are leaving a page, it may be necessary to change the layout to make follow-on links more conspicuous or enticing. I found doing this on one page reduced exits by about 8%.
• Linking content from Wikipedia (like my book reviews) has resulted in a lot of traffic to my website. I find this has also increased the Page Rank of those pages. Obviously, if you are trying this, you have to submit a link to something relevant, otherwise your entry will be edited out. [Aside: Original Google paper]
• A lot of blog traffic seems to come from Google and Technorati. A related fact is that the average page/view is lower for the blog than the website which seems to suggest that people come searching for a particular content and blogs are not well organized to provide additional links on the same content to visit.
• I suppose at least some blog visitors have subscribed to the feed, but neither Google Analytics nor Blogger provide any ability to know that. I can track if someone is reading the FeedBurner feed, but it doesn't provide anywhere near the same information - even if I subscribe to TotalStats.
• There are a lot of vanity searches for "krishna kumar" leading to the website. That way, it is good to have a common name, but it is not easy to be on the top of the search results. Right now, I (site or blog) seem to be on the 1st page of Google (out of 1.3 million results), Live.com (450K), Ask.com (320K) and Yahoo! (2.5 million). [Aside: Yahoo! seems to have more sites/pages indexed than Google, but having compared the cached pages on both, I can state from personal experience that Yahoo! is really behind on crawling.]
• The above sounds really egotistical, but maybe not - I suppose everyone has Googled themselves. In fact, there are some good reasons you probably should Google yourself. (And according this guy, some reasons not to.) Also, here is Eric Sink with a blog that, in part, discusses about the visibility of your name due to technology, regardless of how influential you actually are in real life.

Since neither my website nor my blog is commercialized, understanding to use Analytics is purely academic. It is nice to understand some aspects of how SEO (search engine optimization) works. I also use Google Webmaster tools - which provides some search information not available to Analytics. It is also encouraging to see more hits some days so that I can keep writing. Hopefully some people find some of the information on the site and blog useful.

Technorati tags: Google Analytics, Google Webmaster, SEO

Balance

Too little process can lead to unpredictability and unmaintainable products.
Too much process can lead to inflexibility and waste.

Too little risk can result in outdated strategies and de-motivated people.
Too much risk can result in bankruptcy and being way ahead of your time.

Too little passion can result in bland products.
Too much passion can result in late products and being niched out of the mainstream.

Too little knowledge can make for foolish assumptions.
Too much knowledge can sometimes lead to arrogance and hubris.

Balance!

Too little or too much of anything can wreck your personal and professional life.

Base your balance on realities.

Know that what is balance for "X" may be unbalanced for "Y".

And sometimes, the balance can be an extreme.

Figure it out. :-)

Technorati tags: balance, management, learning

Netflix, Snow, Google and AIDS

I know the title is kind of weird, but it just describes the 4 paragraphs below. Probably more interesting than saying "Updates on past posts". (is "past post" an alliteration?)

In my "Hair Down" post, I talked about Netflix vs Blockbuster where the Total Access program seems to me like a big Netflix killer. It looks like Netflix is doing something about it with its new streaming video service. It is not really appealing since the movies cannot be watched on TV and it is streaming, not downloadable - which means that you have to have a good Internet connection while this is going on. Apparently, it also looks like Netflix is only offering a small portion of their overall movie inventory. On my part, I don't think this is going to work, though I can't blame Netflix for trying.

And in New England, we didn't quite get "snow". It is an ice storm and power is down in many parts in New Hampshire - so far, not in North Londonderry. It is supposed to get really cold here - an unpleasant surprise after the incredibly warm weather we had in December. Roads, pavements and door handles are icy and slippery.

As for my complaint about the lack of an easier interface for some of the advanced features in Google, here is Soople. They have different forms for various types of Google searches. The very fact that this has not been developed by Google is amazing, considering that 20% of everyone's time there is free to spend on pet projects.

Also, here is some more information on the AIDS epidemic in Africa. The biggest challenge of this decade will be to overcome disease and war in Africa. Beside that challenge, all other issues pale in comparison.

Technorati tags: Netflix, streaming video, snow in new england, AIDS, Google Search

Trusting Theories

One of the biggest problems when trying to learn earnestly is information overload. Reading books, skimming blogs, visiting websites, hearing audio tapes, seeing webcasts or attending seminars - there are so many ideas, theories and principles to process. Problems include

• There are many conflicting theories & frameworks: For example, CMM vs Agile
• Sometimes a tactic, like firing the bottom 10% of the company every year, is controversial and each side has its own set of data to argue with. The layman doesn't have enough information to evaluate the information.
• Different principles may be treated with different priorities by various experts. For example, for some, quality & features of a product may be the most important. For others, easy release gains precedence. And here is another person with a balanced approach.
• Experts may have diverse backgrounds that may lead them to advocate one tactic. A person with an engineering background may have something different to say than one with a financial or law education. The ordinary person doesn't usually read the biographies of the information provider.
• Principles using analogies and metaphors are appealing, but only go so far in explaining organizational behavior or whatever one is studying.
• Experts tend to change their minds over a period of time - usually, the idea becomes more nuanced. One has to get the right literature from them to read.

What does a person do? I feel that the best way to assimilate new information is to be receptive and skeptical at the same time. As long as the idea sounds logical, it can be accepted for the time being. The skepticism part is that the idea should be mistrusted until it starts proving itself.

Instead of a binary "Yes/No" for trusting an idea, it is better to think of levels of trust. An idea or philosophy that has shown success over several years should be given greater trust than a recent one that has worked 2-3 times in different projects. Falling for the latest fad and imaging it to be the silver bullet to solve all of one's problems can be a big mistake.

A new idea must also find its place in your mind among existing ideas. If the new idea is in direct conflict with them and you believe that the new idea has merit, then it is time to do some deep thinking and experimenting. Sometimes the existing theories may need to be modified to accommodate new thinking.

As for information overload - during the initial stages of understanding a domain, it is perhaps necessary to be swayed widely in different directions based on information from various sources. As we start understanding ideas and accepting or rejecting them, we can develop stronger convictions. Such convictions provide vision and direction. Once that is established, half-baked theories cannot break them - however with an attitude towards learning, even strong beliefs can change when revolutionary new ideas come along.

Technorati tags: ideas, theories, information overload, learning

Hair Down

Well, back to work tomorrow. So, posting a few random thoughts here. While navigating through Orkut, found a few of my friends who were blogging. Here is a list:

• Prashant Danda (colleague): http://icameisawiblogged.blogspot.com/ (his personal blog), http://fresh-ant.blogspot.com/ (technology-related) and http://dotnetfx3.blogspot.com/ (.NET 3.0 and Sharepoint - this is really good - lot of outgoing links and information on resources)
• Babu Sathish (colleague): http://healthcareinus.blogspot.com/
• Vipins Gopinathan (collegemate and colleague): http://vipins-online.blogspot.com/
• Ranjith Antony (former colleague): http://sunran.com/blog/
• Aravindhan Damodharan (colleague): http://mraravinth.blogspot.com/

Some of you guys haven't been blogging in quite a while! If you are reading this, here is a fan talking: More!

I have been taking good advantage of Blockbuster's Total Access (Read the first few comments in the post) which allows you to return DVDs at their store and get movies in return for free. As a uneducated consumer, I think that the only thing between Netflix and bankruptcy is the number of titles Netflix has in comparison with Blockbuster. The Blockbuster website is now Ajax-driven, but site performance has taken a nosedive. Not that I really care as I had create a huge queue already.

Watched "Lagaan" again today. The last time I watched this was in 2001 on the side of the front row in a small theatre. To understate it, I didn't "get the whole picture" - if you know what I mean. There was a deleted scene as part of the DVD's Special Features - actually a string of unnecessary scenes that perhaps would have spoiled the movie. "Lagaan" felt better on a second viewing - a mark of a well-made movie.

Is it better to post 7 times on the weekend or once every day? I mean, from a web visibility standpoint. I suppose it is the latter, but it is really tough to focus and blog every day, especially after a tiring day at the office. Geez, I don't even feel like exercising.

Finally, are we going to have some snow in New England this year? Maybe this week? After the especially hot summer, I don't think there are going to be any disbelievers in global warming here anymore. Of course, in Colorado, it is a different story...

12 more minutes to "24". Have a nice week!

Technorati tags: blockbuster total access, netflix, snow in new england, lagaan

Experiences with Reading Blogs

Recently, some of my friends have asked me about what the best way to read blogs is. My answer was to use the software I am using, namely, Google Reader. Since its recent updates, Google Reader has become increasingly powerful and easy to use. Among my favorite features are the following:

• The shortcut keys (j, k, ga, s) so that I can easily navigate while eating or while using a laptop.
• Starring allows me to read longer articles later while blowing through the rest.
• Tagging helps me archive articles for future reference.
• The recent "Personalized Trends" allows me to view my reading habits and change my subscriptions accordingly.

Although I have added it to my Personalized Google Home Page, I don't use the Home Page very often since I am using the Google Sidebar. The integrated Gmail feature is good, but it doesn't work the way I want it to, i.e., send the whole content instead of the link - and it doesn't retain the text formatting very well. I also don't like the way the tag delete functionality and subscribing work. For example, when I am reading a blog and I find 3 blog links and want to subscribe to all three of them, each time, the reader takes me to the new subscription while I just want to stay in the current blog and add the rest. And there are some performance problems, too - though it is much better on Firefox than IE.

Despite the negatives, I still like and recommend it. Previously, I tried the SharpReader RSS Reader - which however meant having to run another application. The intravNews reader was much better because it integrated with Outlook, but I was hampered by the fact that I could not access an important blog post when I was on another system. When Google Reader came out, I tried it out, but it was until only recently that I have started using it in a big way. Also, the release of Internet Explorer 7 also helped because you can now keep multiple tabs open in one single application. I usually have one IE instance open all the time at work or home - so it becomes rather easy.

Since I started using Google Reader, here are some of my observations and habits in reading blogs:

• Generally I don't subscribe to blogs that have a high frequency of daily posts (Boing Boing, Engadget, The Gothamist) or that have a very low weekly frequency. Robert Scoble is the major exception (in the high-frequency category) because his posts are shorter and more relevant - though sometimes he deviates into stuff like the Edwards campaign (which is really irrelevant to me in late 2006/early 2007).
  
  On the other side, I still subscribe to Stevey's Blog Rants (now infrequent), because although I don't quite like his one-sided bombasts, his writing is really good and entertaining. The "Good Agile, Bad Agile" rant is particularly ironic now for its talk of "relatively rare crunch periods" since Stevey seems to be really busy nowadays.
  
• Generally, I like longer posts - when they are well-written and flow logically. Most end up starred initially and then find themselves tagged for reference.
• Shorter posts are good when they present an idea in the form of a story or metaphor. These are useful representation of real-life events or things, but usually cannot (and perhaps should not) be extended too far to fit all scenarios.
• I quickly unsubscribe from posts that want me to go to their website to read the full posts. The only exception is Pogue's Posts. I do visit sites when the post is interesting enough to make me want to leave a comment.

I am slowly adding more blog feeds, seeing how it goes. I tend to remove feeds when it becomes more difficult to manage. After a few weeks more, I plan to post a list of my twenty most favorite/relevant blogs.

 

Technorati tags: Google Reader, reading blogs, Stevey's Blog Rants, Scoble, Pogue's Posts

Dropping Out

How many years should one stay in college?

Should one try to acquire more knowledge before entering the job market or jump in to gain work experience?

There are several examples of entrepreneurs like Bill Gates and Larry Ellison who have made successful careers by directly going into business instead of completing school. But I also suppose there are an equal number of people who may not have been so successful. Innate talents, existing social connections and pure luck can help people succeed even if they have no formal training.

One of the problems that I see with not having a formal education is the number of missed opportunities when one is doing business. Most of the time, the entrepreneur uses his or her own past experience, conditioning or plain instincts to handle complex business issues from marketing to human resources to financial matters. Quite often, many business people make mistakes because they don't know any better. Huge sums can be lost while they learn from experience.

Such mistakes could be avoided altogether with a proper grounding in business fundamentals. That is not to say that someone should not break rules and stifle innovation. But quite often, the business person does not even know the rules or why he or she is breaking them. Many employees may also get frustrated working under such a leader or manager and leave - again a loss of opportunity.

There are situations where a person has to drop out because of economic constraints or family demands. In those cases, the person becomes really busy in their line of work and never gets back to completing their studies. This is a pity, because there are so many different options like online and part-time courses. Even at a less-than-stellar college, people can learn a lot if they really come for self-improvement.

Technorati tags: school dropouts, business leaders, rules of management

Lessons from Movie Watching

Take a look at the following quotes and guess where they came from. 

• I'll be back.
• Life is like a box of chocolates.
• I'll make him an offer he can't refuse.

Even if you are not a movie buff, you probably got all three movies right. Remembering movies, their plotlines and quotes is fun. You get to use the quotes when you have fun with your friends. Probably when seeing the movie again, you know exactly what the character would say at a particular time in a scene. When re-runs of "Everyone Loves Raymond" come on TV, my wife and I sometimes burst out laughing knowing what the characters are going to say or do next.

When you think about it, it is actually pretty amazing that we can remember such movies to the minute details. We don't go into a movie theatre or pop in a DVD and start making notes or even consciously decide to remember the movie. We just want to have a good time. Somehow, the movie sticks in our brain and we can easily regurgitate everything that was shown or spoken in the film. It doesn't matter how well we did at school - anybody and everybody we know has this capability.

Why is the movie-watching experience different from sitting in a classroom and hearing a lecture? Most people find it difficult to remember or learn much. Some observations:

• The classroom lecture is a one-track method of teaching and learning. It is singularly monotonous and typically has limited room for dialogue. This may seem ideal for learning because it has less distractions with only one source of information. However when compared to the movie form, it is less complex and fails to engage the mind. The interactions between various characters excites different feelings in our brain and keeps us more engrossed. A recent book "Everything bad is good for you" explains how more complex TV shows and video games are more popular than simpler ones. Contrast the intricacies and complications in "24" and "Lost" with older action and mystery plots.
  
  
• It should be observed that some students do learn a lot from the lectures. My experience (and yours probably) has been that the ones who go in with an intention to try to understand what is going on pick up things better than those who have already decided that it was going to be a wash-out. In fact, this is the same as watching a bad movie. Usually within the first few seconds (and definitely 95% of the time within the first 5 minutes), we know if the movie is a bomb. After all, it is all going through the motions using the sunk-costs fallacy. You don't remember the bad movies so well. [You do remember the really bad movies because they evoke incredulity, disgust and other strong emotions instead of just plain boredom]
  
  Back to learning, the attitude going in to the lecture helps a lot. In fact, even strong negative feelings towards the lecturer may help because you will be intently listening to what he/she has to say so that you can point them out or reinforce your internal negativity towards the person - I wouldn't recommend this, but it has worked for me for a couple of teachers who didn't know what the world they were doing.
  
  
• If you are seeing the sequel first, you probably got the plot, but didn't follow many references made by the characters. In the classroom, unless you are already prepared with the pre-requisites (like calculus for an advanced physics class), chances are that even an initial interest in the lecture will die a quick death when you don't quite get the flow (what the heck is the integral of a natural log, anyway?). Be prepared!

There are good lecturers and bad ones. There were many teachers and professors whose classes I really looked for because they made the subject so interesting with their presentation and stories. Today audio tapes offer another lecture-like venue. People like Tom Peters and Malcolm Gladwell make the listening and learning so much worthwhile.

 

Technorati tags: movie watching lessons, lectures, learning, Tom Peters, Malcolm Gladwell