Edge Perspectives with John Hagel: What is Web 2.0?

Edge Perspectives with John Hagel: What is Web 2.0?: “What is Web 2.0?

Listening to the wide-ranging conversations regarding the Web 2.0 meme, I keep coming back to the old Buffalo Springfield lyric in “For What It’s Worth”: “There’s something happening here, what it is ain’t exactly clear.””web 2.0

Dreams of Tipu Sultan

“My mission is to oust British out of India”. Tipu Sultan, one of the greatest kings in the Indian history, a great man, who respected all religons, a man who had only one vision “Ousting the British”.

All this is what I saw and felt in a play which I attended,(thanks to a friend of mine who invited me over as his wife was busy). The play “Dreams of Tipu Sultan” was performed in Rangashankara a theatre in J.P Nagar Bangalore. It is written by Girish Karnard, and performed by ART(Artists Repository Theatre).

It showed the dreams of Tipu Sultan interspersed with his life events and how he interpreted the dreams. Though as by my reckoning, the dreams parts was lesser than the actual life events.

Overall a well directed play and the performance was good. It had no sets/backdops, and yet the quality of the actors pulled it off. A must watch if possible or a must read of the book.

Rating: 4 out of 5
Dreams of Tipu Sultan,Tipu Sultan,Rangashankara,Bangalore,Theatre

Will we ever hit the road to smooth traffic

Times of India says: “Scene: Shanghai. Eighteenlane roads, smooth traffic flow, no crisscrossing of roads, disciplined driving, no lane-jumping and traffic under control.
Scene: Bangalore. At best, 100-ft roads which accommodate two-way traffic. Hardly six lanes put together, bumper-to-bumper traffic, no lane discipline, all kinds of vehicles choke the roads and roads dug up almost everywhere. “bangalore

Crime- Koramangala

Bangalore Buzz: “KORAMANGALA, one of the posh areas of Bangalore today , is also known to be den for IT professionals. Of late, the area is in news for all the wrong reasons. Robbery , burglary and the like incidents are the order of the day . While the price of plots in Koramangala are on the rise, the risk involved in residing in this area is also increasing. BVT finds out the reason as to why this area has become the dome of such anti-social activities and the solutions to cope with this regular problem.”bangalore,koramangala

Entrepreneurs Are Predators

Tom Evslin: “Entrepreneurs Are Predators

Predators are smarter than prey. Hare-brained is an insult; sharp as a fox is a compliment.

I have an evolutionary theory to explain this (full disclosure: except for reading voraciously on the subject, I am totally unqualified to have evolutionary theories). A leopard chasing an impala can make a mistake, lose the quarry, learn from the mistake, and hunt more wisely on another day. If the impala makes a mistake, it becomes the leopard’s lunch. Predators fail often; prey fail only once.

So it would be a waste of energy for prey to have a large analytical brain or to divert any resources into learning while running away. Better just to have long legs, good ears, and a healthy paranoia. Thinking could be fatal. It also doesn’t take a lot of smarts to eat grass”Entrepreneurs

12 Months to Startup

WebKEW: 12 Months to Startup:

Wanting to get your own business off the ground? This article shows you the steps:

12 Months to Startup

The steps are:

1. Understand yourself
2. Research and Evaluate Your Idea
3. Choose a Business, a Location and its Structure, and Name It
4. Calculate the Costs
5. Write Your Business Plan
6. Identify Sources of Startup Financing
7. Work Through the Startup Paperwork Maze
8. Develop Your Marketing and Customer Service Plan
9. Court Your First Customers
10. Create Your Support Team
11. Execute Your Marketing Plan
12. Hang Out Your Shingle

Several of these steps can be simplified or eliminated if the company you are building is a small Web company. For example, you generally do need financing if you are opening a retail store, but you do not need financing to build a simple retail site on the web.

However, if you come to a point where want your small company to turn into a bigger one, you will probably find yourself going through most of these steps in one way or another. Therefore, it is good to know about the steps ahead of time.startup,entrepreneur

Self Discipline

Bangalore Buzz says: It appears to be a mystery. The Traffic police seem to have pulled every trick out of their hats to tackle Bangalore’s traffic woes, but traffic jams continue to haunt the City. Traffic experts have squarely blamed motorists for not following rules and regulations and causing congestion. The experts appear to be right.” bangalore,traffic jams

Open source Business model

Dave pollard writes: There is as yet no consistent definition of Open Source Business. I’ve used the criteria for ‘Open Source’ from wikipedia to come up with this definition:A radically transparent organization which (a) operates through open collaborative partnerships with customers, employees, suppliers, and the communities in which it does business, (b) shares its sources of information, designs, specifications and processes with them, and (c) allows open participation in and makes public all decisions it makes, all operating information, and all documents it produces, on a creative commons basis. open source

The ex-wife vanishes and other tales

CNET news: “Microsoft researchers have come up with technology that can remove an image, say a person, from the foreground and then replicate the background that the no-longer-visible person was blocking. The technology,”

Balanced Scorecard

I got an invitation from a friend of mine(who incidentally is a big crazy guy on books) to go to a book signing event. Robert S Kaplan, who is the inventor of the Balance Scorecard approach was the GOH(guest of Honour). The location: Crossword(Bangalore) When: 14 Sep(18:30). The show started late with very few guys from KPMG and Accenture, who were Management Consultants who were trying to implement his approach for various clients of theirs. A short power failure in the shop to which Prof Kaplan suggested that it was an indication start. Most part of the talk was about why he came to write his books and what is currently in the pipeline. But when it got to the Q&A it turned out to be interesting. He has come to a conslusion that the Corporates in India do not Stratergise, hence we are not using the Balance Scorecard approach effectively. I wonder whether we stratergise or not. The Balance Scorecard approach in a minimalistic way suggests that a balanced approach towards people and finances are to be got. What I see in India is a balanced approach towards people. We are more of a society dependent individuals, hence defnitely we are people oriented. And talking about finances every business is here to do that. So I was wondering if this was a correct statement in an Indian context. One thing which I really felt, was when he said that Stratergy in US based companies are not only for companies, but for individuals too. He mentioned that a Chemical Engg in GE will be in the plastics division for a few years, and if he performs well, he will be shifted to the Finance Dept to Asia region for a few years, then probably he could be shifted to marketing in Europe…. This king of career plan stratergy is missing in India. I guess the reason is people are not loyal to a single company here.. ) no offence to guys who jump around, but even for a company to build a career plan stratergy a person has to perform consistently for atleast a period of 4-5 years in a particular team/dept, then movement across the company could be a possibility. I see sense in this approach as getting a board member is easier from within than hire a CEO from outside(Good example of failure in such cases is Pepsi CEO at Apple). Also there was small talk on where Balance Scorecard can fit(Size of company/team). As to what I understood from the whole talk is, Americans(not all) are more process oriented, if the processes are in place, then people would follow it and a good outcome is possible. However we Indians(Asians included too to a certain extent) are people oriented players, we are not too worried about processes, but more worried on people’s emotions(literally speaking here). All in all a good session for me, woudld love to goto more of such kind of sessions.balance scorecard