TJ's Kaleidoscope

IE 6 is not supported. I wish.

If you haven’t noticed already, CallFire is going through a major site redesign. It’s a redesign that’s very much a work in progress for it’s not just the look & feel that’s changing but we’re also laying the foundation for what we hope to be the next stage of explosive growth. But I digress.

One of the biggest challenges from a UI perspective has been keeping the site universally accessible. This is of course a breeze in FireFox & Chrome, but as any web designer will know, Internet Explorer, in all it’s flavors is a bane of any website’s existence. So, we we’re having quite a few issues with IE 6—that archaic browser that should never have seen the light of day—and yours truly decreed that we shall no longer support IE 6.0. Wishful thinking.

I got inspiration for this brilliant idea from YouTube’s message (shown above) and figured, if Google can do it, why can’t we? Small problem. Unlike YouTube, almost all of CallFire’s visitors are paying customers using computers that have software installed by change-resistant IT departments that were flooding our support lines. So as much as it would be fun to lay down the law, I’ll have to grudgingly acquiesce to reality. Influencing Change , it turns out, is hard for it seldom happens on your timetable.  Back to the testing cycle folks!

Quote of the Day

They say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.     

                                                                              —Andy Warhol

MacBook Pro and Stability

Hello, my name is TJ and I’m a recovering PC.

As you may know, I have had nothing but problems (documented here and here) with Windows, both Vista and XP. Finally, after the third crash and the third time having to rebuild my hard drive, I decided to make the switch to Apple. I’ll have more on that later, but this little thing I just had to share.

 

I’d like to bring your attention to the little timer in the middle of the screenshot (the Mac by the way, makes it super easy to take screenshots). That’s my VPN connection, and it’s been continuously connected for 57 hours, 34 minutes, and 25 seconds. This was virtually impossible in my Windows machine (even in the uber stable—by Windows standards—XP). Without exception, the connection would randomly drop, and I’d have to reconnect. Not only that, it’s been more than a week since I’ve rebooted my Mac. In the windows world, if I didn’t reboot every couple of days, I knew I was headed for trouble.

This brings me to my first observation about Mac and the need of a stable OS. In all fairness, Vista does almost everything that the OS X can, but it does it in such a clumsy way that it’s near impossible to be productive. The best an OS can do is to get out of the way and let you do your work. The OS X, does that very well for part of getting out of the way is being a stable platform.

Quote of the Day

Design is not just what it looks and feels like. Design is how it works.

                                                                                          --Steve Jobs

Startup Lessons: Passion

I had the good fortune to work with hardworking and passionate people all my career, but I’ll say this, in a startup, passion is not an optional ingredient. It is in fact, essential to survival.

At IBM, I probably put in just as many late nights and weekends, but somewhere deep down I knew that if I didn’t work one weekend, or went home at 5:00 PM one day, the stock’s wasn’t going to tank. However a startup requires hard work at a level of consistency that is impossible to sustain without passion. Startups are run during the week, but built over weekends. Every weekend not spent building, shows up in lost opportunity the very following week. Such sustained efforts are impossible without passion.

Passion gives you hope, makes work it's own reward, and provides the needed focus. On the other hand, hard work without passion is an affront to intelligence, and will die a quick death. This is especially true when building a company for so many things will grind you down, beat you up, that hard work by itself wont have a chance. A startup will dispense with cold efficiency any effort that is abundant in hard work but lacking in passion. There will be so many pitfalls, setbacks, and missteps that you will lose the will to work hard. As I look back at the almost two years with CallFire, and all the ups and downs, I realize what’s kept me going (and still is) is passion--a passion for technology, for problem solving, and for challenges.

Passion, or loving-what-you-do, is hard to describe and probably the reason why this post might make little sense. Passion is emotional, and emotions are hard to put into words, especially so in the confines of a blog.

This post also concludes the first installment of my startup lessons: ignorance, arrogance, and passion. As I said when I first started on this series, these are just my lessons, and a description of my still on-going journey. They are by no means a prescription. Every journey is unique, I'm just sharing mine.

Quote of the Day

I know the price of success: dedication, hard work, and an unremitting devotion to the things you want to see happen. 

                                                                     --Frank Lloyd Wright

Do you Buy or Build?

My previous post got Dinesh--one of my business partners at CallFire and I talking about the core argument behind cloud computing.  Do you buy or build software? This is a decades old question in software and a complicated one at that, for the argument can be made either way. Think about it, if integrating your application with the telephone is critical to your business, then you can go one of two routes. You can either say "It's core to my business, so I'm going to build it from the ground up", or you could say, "Because it's core to my business, I'm going to let the experts take care of it, and hold them accountable". Of course, CallFire would encourage the latter. Telephony in all its glory and complexity has been the overriding focus of our lives for more than two years now and we could think of many reasons why letting us worry about managing calls makes a lot sense. There are many objective factors to take into account like cost & quality, however many decision makers overlook the human factor i.e., the teams that will implement these decisions.

 

 

Our own internal decisions have invariably leaned towards build. The way we looked at it, the only way we could perfect the trifecta of quality, growth, and scale was to build our stack from the ground up. I know there are some techies out there that are shaking my head as I'm saying this (and perhaps some competitors snickering), but it works! The overriding reason being the team at the core of this effort. We have a crack group of people that know every aspect of what goes on in our servers. Komnieve is our system architect and asterisk compiler. Punit is our Java code hacker, and resident asterisk coder. Vijesh spends his time at the application, ui, and db layer. What we share is a propensity for lateral thinking. Between these three and myself, we can recompile kernels, deploy on-demand backups, launch complex features, and trace any of the millions of calls that go out of our system. This team has the ability to look at a problem, and figure out how to approach the solution in non-linear ways. In other words, instead of spending time analyzing the problem, figure out the end-goal, and then try anything and everything to get there.  Working with the three of them (and of course, let's not rule out Dinesh, even if he's 'only' marketing), only reaffirms what I've known all my career: You can go to hell and back if you have a great team with you in the trenches.

If you have a similar group amigos, then by all means go ahead and build your telephony stack. We'd like to think we're special, but realize we're hardly unique. However, if you don't have the time or resources to build such a team yourself, then definitely consider this critical aspect of your decision. It's easy to fortify yourself behind elaborate spreadsheets filled with numbers, but in the end it's people that build value.

Quote of the Day

Individual commitment to a group effort — that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.

                                                                    --Vince Lombardi

The Secret of Cloud Telephony

Given that at CallFire it’s my job and my obsession, I feel it’s time I talk a bit about cloud telephony.  The term, combined with it’s elder cousin—cloud computing—have become buzz words, and as is usually the case, truth is the first casualty marketing.  Nevertheless, cloud telephony is real. You have only to look at our success as proof of this  idea. Our web presence makes it simple to dial thousands of  phones,  run national Get-Out-The-Vote operations, and create American Idol style call-in numbers all in the matter of minutes.

 

 

 

The secret is creating what Grady Booch calls the illusion of simplicity. It is an illusion because building quality software is essentially complex.  Yet abstracting this complexity from the user is the value we create. For example, any developer can use our API to make calls without ever having to know the first thing about VoIP. This is the true beauty of cloud telephony.  The idea that you can outsource  gargantuan tasks of setting up telecom trunk groups, allocating channels, managing carrier relationships and simply focus on your core bread & butter business. In the end, cloud telephony is about peace of mind, the guarantee that the light will always turn on when you flip that switch, and in the rare cases it doesn’t, you can simply pick up the phone and call (or yell) at someone.

Quote of the Day:

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

                                                             --Leonardo Da Vinci 

Blackberry Bold & the Power of Ads

Blackberrys will always have a special place in my heart, mainly because it was my first smart phone and showed me the joys of always being connected. And truth be told, had my Curve not died, I would never have switched to the iPhone. The iPhone is great, I love it and wouldn’t go back, but the Blackberry has a better OS and still unbeatable when it comes to push email. And of course, the iPhone comes with the baggage of AT&T, which is another discussion.

I just saw this ad for the Bold, and it made me yearn for my days with the Blackberry.  The the graphics combined with the great music managed to create a feeling of joy and promise.

Incidentally, the music is really catching on, turns out everyone wants to know the composer. If it is indeed custom music for the ad, I think Blackberry may have an excellent viral marketing opportunity here.

Quote of the Day

One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.

                                                      --Bob Marley

Friendcast Mentioned in MacWorld

Friendcast—CallFire’s app for iPhone users got mentioned in MacWorld roundup today.  As the article states, it’s an excellent way to send out a broadcast message to multiple iPhone contacts with simple taps on the screen. All the people to whom I’ve given demos seem to love the app. They see uses for it like last minute changes of venues, sending out mass greetings (the holiday season is already here folks). Those without iPhones found one more reason to get one! So I’d encourage all those with iPhones to download this app. It’s fast, friendly, and did I mention free?

Go on! Socially network using—voice—the  natural communication form.

Quote of the Day:

If I am to speak ten minutes, I need a week for preparation; if fifteen minutes, three days; if half an hour, two days; if an hour, I am ready now.

                                                                     --Woodrow Wilson

I Switched!

Well, long story short, my BlackBerry, much loved I might add, died a very ugly death. T-Mobile was going to charge me $177 for replacing an end-of-cycle phone with a replica on an archaic network (EDGE). I figured, better than that would be to get on a super fast network (3G) on a cutting edge phone (iPhone). So I made the switch. I am now an iPhone user and an AT&T customer. One thing the is true, the iPhone has a phenomenal interface, and the other thing is true, nothing beats the BlackBerry when it comes to email.

Three Things I Love about the iPhone:

1. 3G Network Connectivity: This is the deal clincher, surfing at speeds of most home wireless networks is a major upgrade.
2. Amazing Interface: The famed interface is every bit as good as they say it is, and then some more. Nothing beats full-feature web browsing.
3. Media Integration: I never thought I'd miss media integration until the iPhone. One click and all my music is now on my phone and I don't have to keep two gadgets, one cell phone and one iPod. One exception: The gym; I don't trust it staying in my hand when I'm running on the treadmill.

 

Three Things I Miss about the BlackBerry:

1. Push Email: Yes, the iPhone claims to have push email, but BlackBerry's email network is unbeatable. Simple: To get my iPhone to get all the emails my laptop gets, I have to tweak server settings, however, at no time I had to tweak any settings anywhere either on the BlackBerry or on my server/laptop to get my push email by the minute.
2. Keyboard: People will live without a live feedback keyboard, but yet nothing to beat a full QWERTY push button keyboard. Plain and simple.
3. 3rd Party Support: There were so many clients for the BlackBerry that were well integrated into the BlackBerry. For example, whenever my Google client got an email, my BlackBerry light would blink. Right now, for the iPhone only Facebook as a better client. To check anything that's related to Google I have to open up Safari. No google talk client, no mail client. What's up with that Google?

All in all, I think it was reasonable purchase. For those who thought I sold out, I really tried to look for a BlackBerry comparison, but no one would give me a straight up answer on when the Bold is coming out. So, here I am, joining the masses.

Quote of the Day

So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do.

                                                                   --Ben Branklin

CallFire Products: My Obsession

Ok, the reason why I've been very quiet lately is because what started out as a cause about ten months ago, has now become an obsession leaving little time for anything else. In our quest to grow faster, stronger, and better, we made seismic changes in the way we run our business, starting from the network and server infrastructure, the application design and topology to finally the UI redesign.

As you'll notice, our new website sports a brand new look and is designed to give first-time visitors an easy way to gauge what is it that we do.

We did it in three major ways:

Simplified Top Menu

This gives people an easy way to access our products and services, including flash demos!

Humanizing the Landing Page

While the industry works on making agent-based multi-modal interfaces feasible allowing for fully personalized avatars, we've created a generic online one using a live person! All you have to do is click on the play button.

Simplified Site Map

CallFire.com has some great content, and yet few knew about it. In fact, when trying to find any of the following keywords, our own help desk would have to Google "CallFire" and then the keyword to find the link. Well, none of that anymore!

Products & Services Voice Broadcast Virtual Call Center VoiceXML Hosted IVR Hosted dialer Automatic polling Autodialer Predictive dialer Call Centers Call center dialer Call center outbound Call center popup Call center predictive dialer Call center software Call center solution Contact center outbound Contact center software Virtual contact center

Ways to use CallFire Autodialer software Automatic phone dialer Emergency telephone dialer Emergency telephone notification Political dialing Mortgage autodialer Mortgage lead generation Mortgage dialer Nonprofit dialer Nonprofit fund raising Nonprofit marketing Political dialer School telephone notification Telemarketing dialing Telephone bank Virtual telephone bank VoIP applications VoIP software development Voter Voice Connect Windows autodialer

Industry Related Broadcast messaging Custom IVR Dialer software Enterprise phone software Enterprise voice broadcast Phone autodialer Power dialing Telephony sales Telephone autodialer Telephone broadcast Telephone dialer Telephone integration TUI Virtual phone bank Voicemail broadcasting VoIP blaster VoIP software VUI

VoIP APIs Click-To-Call API Dialer API Phone call API Telephone API Call center API Voice broadcast API VoIP development Asterisk Related Asterisk autodialer Asterisk predictive dialer Asterisk click-to-call

The work of a company is not done, especially for an owner/partner, so there's still a lot more work to be done and very little time to get done in, but hopefully I'll some find time to to blog on this site. Here's a good topic, I've been at this for about ten months now, how do I like it? How different is it from working for IBM? What does it take to work for your own? Stay tuned!

Quote of the Day:

I know quite certainly that I myself have no special talent; curiosity, obsession and dogged endurance, combined with self-criticism, have brought me to my ideas.

                                                                                      --Albert Einstein

BlackBerry Bold: The Bold That Isn't

First, I will state that I love my BlackBerry, in fact, I'm glued to it. It goes everywhere I go, I even go to bed with it. I started using my Titanium curve back in February, and it already feels like I've had it forever. Never mind it cost me couple of hundred to get one, not to mention the unlimited data plan, I'm spending significant amount of my limited monthly income to be always on, always connected.

Now, in my search for a truly smart phone, I will admit I was very very tempted by the Apple iPhone. From the hip factor to its amazingly intuitive interface, it is a great buy, but I found that the BlackBerry was better for the simple reason of a QWERTY keyboard, push email that is phenomenally fast and an OS that is by far the leader in mobile computing. Having said that, I was looking forward to the next generation BlackBerry, the one that would be the Apple killer, the one that would tell Apple, "Welcome Kiddo, Mobile computing doesn't come easy, let me show you how its done!". The new BlackBerry Bold I must say is very disappointing. Instead of breaking new ground in innovation and technology, instead of redefining the market segment it has come to dominate, it got stuck in the "me too" race. Let's see their feature highlights:

1. Bluetooth 2.0 Support: The Curve and the 8830 already had that.
2. Full-Function Browser: Nothing Opera Mini couldn't do.
3. GPS: The Peal, the 8830, the Curve all have that.
4. BlackBerry Maps: Free download of Google Maps has been available for months!
5. Multimedia: iTunes sync. This may be a good feature, but still too little too late.
6. Wi Fi Integration: No biggie, most email clients can be configured to do so.
7. Razor Sharp Display: So a brand new product launch for a new display? No touch screen?

All in all, the BlackBerry Bold isn't so bold at all. Let's hope the next generation comes by fast. For now I'll continue my love affair with the Curve Titanium.

Quote of the Day

I look at my BlackBerry to get a sense of my life.

                                                 --Quoted in Forbes

Apple Retail Experience

Even though I'm a Windows user and I've found my way to Mac stores a couple of times in the past years and what I've consistently noticed is that they have consciously worked to both simplify the buying and browsing process and yet keep the Apple brand hip, which as a seller of Callfire, I can tell you is not easy.

For example, I walked in knowing exactly what I wanted, so I went looking for the cash register only to realize there were none. Each Apple employee carries a wireless card reader, and my sales person just rang me up, gave me my product, and even offered to email my receipt. Which brings me to my second point--their people. The hip and cool apple image would not be complete without its employees. I am convinced that each and every Apple employee is in fact an Apple fan. My salesperson swore by her MacbookPro, and it showed (it could also be that I was enamored by her considerable personal charm, but I'd like to think I'm a logical person).

I have now three friends who own Macbooks and I have seen them rave more about their Macs than I have heard all my friends on Windows complain about theirs. I am convinced, my next laptop will be a Mac, unless of course Microsoft shapes up and gets rid of the OS known as Vista.

Quote of the Day

Everyone wants a MacBook Pro because they are so bitchin'.

                                                                   --Steve Jobs

Of Principles and Technology

I am a contributor to the ICS alumni blog, my latest post is about computing principles and their timelessness.

On a side note, the vista problems I was having (the random locking up) was it seems, a hardware problem, or should I say a user problem. Turns out, it was locking up because of heat from the processor. The heat of the processor was because the vents were blocked by dust from all the Southern California commuting. I blew air through them to clean it out, and so far the laptop hasn't gotten any hotter than warm, and my OS hasn't crashed yet. So that's my story so far, and I hope I can stick to it. As for all that angst against Vista, most of it is still justified ;-)

Vista Blues

Quote of the Day

A great car (Thinkpad) when matched with a stupido, idiotic, dodo-like, moronic, dumbkoff, bevkoof driver (Vista) will invariably crash.

                                                            --TJ Thinakaran

UCI Flashback

My friend Chad bugged me to publish a paper I wrote for my Biomorphic computing class from my Masters program at UCI. It was the first class I took that morphed the worlds of arts, computers, and engineering into one subject, and stretched my imagination to levels I had not experienced since my undergrad philosophy course.

While there classes in the Masters program I enjoyed, that one was a singularly amazing experience. It was taught by Bill Tomlinson, formerly of the MIT media lab. The whole class was filled with theory and programming challenges on replicating life-like behavior in software systems. One week we would learn flocking theory and how birds and fish seem to instinctually flock, and the next week we had to implement it in a virtual world. I'll put up the code for that later. It certainly wasn't the best implementation in the class, but from a personal perspective, still a hugely rewarding experience. For now, I'll just link to the a paper I wrote titled Perceptual Narrowing: Enhancing Realism in Autonomous Character Interactions. It is about the very human emotion of panic and chocking and outlines a way to implement it for the Virtual Raft Project.

I must point out that I was novice in the field of experts, so I approached this class a sprinter trying to better his personal best rather than get the gold medal. So Chad, I hope you enjoy reading the paper as much as I loved researching and writing it.

Ok, enough of reminiscing, back to my current pursuit.

 

Quote of the Day

I would like to thank flocks. herds. and schools for existing; nature is the ultimate source of inspiration for computer graphics and animation.

                                                           --Craig W. Reynolds

Shoutouts to Friends

Two of my buddies started blogs of their own. I would like to think that I was their inspiration, and would like them to emulate the tremendous success that I have had in the blogosphere.

The first one is Dinesh with his DET blog. Dinesh is what I call the Bill Clinton type, he's smart, intelligent, and you just know up to no good, and yet, you invite him for lunch. Dinesh also serves as the de facto CEO and Sales lead for CallFire, and is responsible for our sales, relationships with VCs and general business development.

The second friend is Vijesh. Vijesh and I go way back when we were teaching assistants for the introductory class in UC Irvine's school (then department) of ICS. Fast forward to seven years later, and here we are in the same fox hole, trying to make something of our lives by creating value in the VOIP phase. Vijesh is the CTO of Callfire. Vijesh's blog reflects his passion, he is a technologist at heart, loves being around people who know what they are doing and has little tolerance of BS or BSers. 

Let the popularity wars begin!

Quote of the Day

Popularity? It is glory's small change.

                                             --Victor Hugo

Help! Google Reader's Got My Feed Messed Up

Like many people, I use Google Reader to check all my feeds, and it does a pretty good job of it. But I got a shock, when I saw feeds tagged as coming from my blog but had nothing to do with me:

 

First I thought someone had broken into my account, but I saw that my web site was good, then I thought someone had hacked into my feed, but I added my feed to my Google homepage, and that too was fine:

 

To have a sanity check, I subscribed to my feed via Outlook 2007, and it too got the correct feed:

 

I cleared the cache of my browser, and yet the same feeds show up. I am at a loss, I'm going to start knocking some virtual doors, and let's see if something turns up.  For those of you who subscribe to my feed, rest assured, those posts are not mine, nor am I endorsing them in anyway.

Quote of the Day:

We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works.

                                                               --Douglas Adams

Capturing the Email Monster

I am enjoying my latest victory over office email. I've gone, in one night from 138 emails in my inbox to five, and can't help but snicker as Lotus Notes works fervently to sync with the server. 138 emails in an inbox may not be big, but given that I treat my inbox as a To-Do list where if it's in the inbox that means I have to act on it, it is a big achievement for me. Usually I'm pretty good at following the RFFD (Reply, File, Forward, or Delete) within 24 hours rule, but lately I've fallen behind.

I do know that this would be a short-lived victory because as the new work week starts, people will start responding to my responses and this is just my IBM email, I still have my client's email client and my personal email to work on.

I need an assistant.....

When Not to Hire Management Consultants

I'm going to break a personal rule and try and talk about something work related without giving any details away. Let's see how I do.

I've had to deal with management consultants a lot lately, and after prolonged exposure and protracted with these specimens, I have a word of advice for executives who hire them.

Don't hire management consultants to do any of the following:

Figure out what's wrong with your business

That's you're job! If you need someone else to figure out why you're not hitting numbers, do data analysis, or ask questions, then perhaps they should be in your seat and not you. Leaders master the essential skill of their organization, managers delegate it. Lead!

Do your dirty work for you

If for some reason you want to get rid of an under performing team member, or cut the funding on a project, or ask the penetrating questions about the viability of a product, that's your job! Imagine you're the General of an army division, and if one of your battallion commanders isn't giving you straight answers. You're not going to delegate asking the questions to someone else are you? 

Fire your gun on their shoulders

That's your job. If you want to foster a culture of transparency and optimism, you have to be the example of being forthright and forthcoming. If you want to use some consultant's report to hire or fire someone or jettison a project, then that shows you aren't ready to take the shoulder for tough decisions and then you shouldn't have the job in the first place.

 

Bottom line is, don't hire them to do your job. If you do, then something's wrong with you and your company that encourages such outsourcing of personal responsibility.

A Definition of Mainframe

A friend emailed this definition of the Mainframe that I thought was very funny, so here it goes:

mainframe n. 1. An obsolete device still used by thousands of obsolete companies serving billions of obsolete customers and making huge obsolete profits for their obsolete shareholders. And this year's run twice as fast as last year's. n. 2. A large PC peripheral

My Name is TJ, I Work for IBM

Some of my friends have asked why don't I blog about work. As you know, I work as a consultant for IBM's Global Business Services division. This is an issue I've grappled with for a while. My few forays into blogging about work related aspects have been relatively well recieved. My 'Ode To The Mainframe' blog is listed in the Cobug usergroup under their links section. Moreover, in the days following that post, my site recieved double-digit visits (instead of the average eight it recieves now). So the quesion may be why don't I blog more about what it is to be an IBMer. Well, there are many reasons.

The First reason is that as a consultant, much of my work is done with IBM's clients and on location. So if I do blog about the business aspects of the work, I may be inadverantly be breaking some non-disclosure law somewhere. I'm not concerned about the ramifications it may have on my career as much as the damage it may cause to my immediate team and all the entities involved. Industrial secrets, competitive data, all that the client has shared with us in good faith (and tight contracts), are at risk, and I don't have the legal chops to decide what is 'blog friendly' and what isn't.

So that basically rules out blogging about the business of IT, the next logical question maybe to blog about the technologies I work with. Well, there are thousands of technologists out there blogging about technology, and probably doing a much better job at it. As a consultant, I am in effect a generalist, I only know enough about the business domain, and the technology to make both work. Innovation in my line of work doesn't come necessarily from inventing new technologies, but from making existing ones simply work. Habitually living in the grey, I cannot look at issues as simply black and white. So for example, if you asked me if Microsoft is good or bad, I would answer its good and its bad.

Finally, I could blog about the not-so-nice aspects of my work. Let's face it, all of us (even the lucky ones who love what they do) have certain aspects of our jobs that we dont' like. I could blog about that, but given that my job is so people centric, I wouldn't be able to do that without compromising their identity that too without their permission. I could be anonymous, but that would mean I have something to hide, which I don't. So you'll have to settle with my griping over chat and in person.  However, if you really have some questions about IBM, I'll answer them or you could go the source like this guy tried. 

 

The Importance of Confidence

 

The year certainly got off to a hectic start. First working week of the year and work is already swamped. I've spent most of the this week in meetings which, for a consultant, usually translates to more work.  But that's not the reason I blog (if you've noticed, I blog very little about my work, but more on that later). It was during one of these meetings I realized the need and value of confidence.

Self-confidence in general is a treasured personal trait. From time immemorial, it has been heralded as as the essential trait of good leadership. It is a combination of portraying what in military terms is called a command presence, unequivocal focus, a sense of achievement, and of knowledge. In some ways its a lot like fear, for once you have it, it's pretty straight forward to grow. The toughest part, at least for me, is getting that initial seed of confidence. Jack Welch and his successor Jeff Immelt, when asked by Charlie Rose about the one thing they wished they had when they started out in their job, the both emphatically replied (in two different interviews), "confidence!".  Colin Powell has a more straight forward definition: "never let them see you sweat".

Confidence became a personal, private issue in a couple of meetings today. In one meeting for example, despite knowing the answers and the resolution at hand I chose to remain silent, in fear that the experts in the room probably knew a lot more than me. In the end, it turns out they came to the same conclusions as I. One could argue, that if I had confidence in my knowledge and/or my problem solving abilities, I would have proposed the solution much earlier, and the meeting would not have dragged as long as it did . But that assumes I had the command presence for people to accept the message. Sometimes who's speaking is more important that message itself.

Lou Dobbs and the CNN Brand

IBM's Irving Wladawsky-Berger has a very engaging post this week on the soul of a business. It is an interesting read that uses CNN's showcasing of Lou Dobbs as a probable example of something that's good for for the short-term and bad for the long-term or for a wider audience. Now, I've not been a fan of Lou Dobbs for a while, however, I think CNN understands his populist US-centric appeal. My connection to the US when in India was CNN-International and on the whole I found that they had a lot more intelligent programming than CNN-US with informed opinions and balanced presentation. See, I have no problems with the Lou Dobbs and the Bill O'Reilly's of the world going on tirades, what I have issues with is when they stop being journalists and start focusing only on one part of the argument. Anyway, read the post, it is a good one.

Google and IBM Should Partner?

I've been quiet for a long while now. Mainly because life has been CrazyMadBusy, and also because I was having a mild case of blogger's block combined with ADD. Then I came across this Business 2.0 blog that suggested that IBM and Google should partner, and my mind said, "Finally! something worth sharing!".

Google's Secret Plan

My friend Kris Ko sent me this link about Bob Cringely's take on Google's secret new plan to provide fast, available access to anything and everything in a bit-stream. This article only elucidates what most of us have known for a while: google has not interested in creating content (like Yahoo or MSN), only in providing access. This is an ambitious agenda, for in the effort to provide access to the collective online knowledge of the world, they are trying to become the de-facto priests of the Oracle of knowledge that is the Internet. One can only think of the future consequences. Think about it, in almost all religions, the priests who control access to the deity are the ones who hold the most power.

One Scenario: Year 2015
Google has created web 2.0, controls access to all information on the web be it text, graphics, video or voice. This has made Google a behemoth of a company worth billions of dollars. As is typical of most large companies, growth becomes a problem, and many of the shareholders believe that Google should start charging for access instead of getting revenue only from advertising. The founders, strongly believing in Google's motto of "Do no evil" refuse to do so because such a method would only be taking advantage of the user's dependence on Google. In a classic replay of Silicon Valley startup metamorphosis, the founders are edged out to bring in a "professional" management team that can focus on growth and numbers, and we have our first Internet monopoly.

This scenario of course, is merely a figment of my imagination. I'd hope, for all our sakes, it doesn't come true. Moreover, it assumes that in 2018 the NP-Complete problem won't be solved by a joint team of PhDs from India and China and who will turn the entire technology industry on its head. Smart Artificial Intelligence (AI) will then have arrived.

India, Open Source, Outsourcing and Employee Retention

India has been in the news a lot lately. Two articles that I think are noteworthy, not only for their brevity but for the insight they provide into larger powerplays happening in our industry. The first is about the open source play happening in India, on how Indian federal, state, and local governments are having to walk the tight rope of keeping western companies (i.e., Micrsoft) happy, and yet show economic prudence in selecting open source software for their needs. Even though the call for use of open-source software has come from the Indian President himself, the Indian government officially remains neutral in its stance.

I do believe that only in emerging mass markets like India (where Microsoft never had a significant toe-hold to begin with) can the duo of Linux and OpenOffice.org become a truly popular alternative. Not yet completely familiar or comfortable with the Windows OS, the user can make the switch to Linux without worrying about lock-in, licencing, or being held hostage to paid upgrades. The story has not been the same in western countries, where Windows has such a strangle-hold on the desktop that Linux is experiencing the fastest growth in servers, but yet to make a dent on desktop deployment (where it remains a geek cool tool for early adopters).

The other story is about the struggle for Indian outsourcing companies to hold on to talent. Out of the 350,000 engineers India graduates every year, less than 30 percent are ready to join the workforce and hit the ground running. This makes the experienced employees even more valuable and hence harder to retain. As I've mentioned before in my one-on-one discussions with friends, the Indian outsourcing industry is currently suffering from the problem of being low on experience, and shallow in their bench. Unless they do something quick to rectify this problem, outsourcers may face a backlash from their customers and clients. Dell taking back its corporate customer support to its Dallas offices is a case in point.

Jonathan Shwartz, where art thou?

A couple of weeks ago, I blogged about how Micrsosoft and the State of Massachusetts had locked horns with regards to the OpenDocument format. It seems now, Microsoft--worried that this defection may be the first of many--has responded in writing warning the State Governor about the danger of the move. Of course, this issue has deepend the chasm between the Microsofties and the Open Source demigods, what's surprised me is the strong opinioned Sun CTO Jonathan Shwartz's unwillingness to take sides on the issue. Through his blog (which I enjoy reading) he as championed open standards, and even attacked other vendors (prominently IBM) for not doing enough to further open standards. Yet, I haven't heard of read or heard anything from him (except a cursory mention on how this dispute is more than a dispute). Its even more surprising since Massachusett's decision will help him more (with regards to StarOffice being a viable alternative) than hurt him. So, I ask the question, Mr. Shwartz where art thou?