Sit, Chennai!

Hey folks,

‘Sit‘, the little informal knowledge forum that I helped start, has almost completed 14 months of existence. As an initiative towards taking the next step, we would be organizing a two-session discussion-based event on the 31st of May, the upcoming Sunday. The information document is available in the page linked above. It is an invitational event and therefore is not open to the general public, as such. Let me not sound very discouraging. If you’d like an invitation, try emailing us. We’d love to consider a few people on a case-to-case basis.

Many thanks to Baidik, Paddy, Dr Annamalai, Vinay Raghu, Ashraf, Milind and Raja M for helping us out in their own ways towards making this event happen. Folks, your commitment towards Sit and towards this unconference has only motivated us to put in more efforts!

Apart from this unconference, there is something bigger brewing in the back. It’s a mind-blowing idea that we’ve come up with and I’m hoping to write on it here very soon. If all things go well, Chennai is going to see a different kind of societal service very very soon.

Yours Skeptically,

P.S. I’ll post pictures and videos of the event, same time next week!

P.P.S. I’ve started linking to peoples’ LinkedIn profiles a lot more than to their blogs/websites. LinkedIn addiction at an all-time high now-a-days! Aaaaargh!

Charlie Hitler

Hey folks,

I have been impressed a lot by Hitler’s assertiveness that I used to read pages and pages of stuff about him. I have a high-res rare young-age photo of him on my desktop itself. A friend of mine (who is usually well informed) came over to my place for taking some ‘.rpm’  files from me. He was naturally drawn to look at the pic and the following convo took place.

Him: Dei.. that guy was history’s greatest comedian!

Me: Well.. he was one of history’s best leaders too!

Him: I’ve seen many of his movies and I think he is still very hilarious.

Me: ?!

Him: That guy had the nerve to mock some of the greatest military leaders of his time!

Me: ?! ?!….. dude… whom do you think he is?

Him: I know he is Charlie Chaplin dude! Don’t you dare think I’m dumb!

Me: I don’t need to think if you’re dumb da! You just made the answer quite obvious!

Him: Yeah! I’m sure you’re wondering if I’d be your quiz partner from now on!

Me: EKSI?! ?!

Yours Skeptically,

P.S. I don’t believe in re-birth as such. But, incidents like these make me wonder if I was Heinrich Himmler in my previous birth.

Stand & Deliver

Hey folks,

I’m going to write about a slightly unpleasant thing today. In the last few months, I’ve kind-of metamorphosed well from a ‘blogger’ to a ‘freelance content writer’. Apart from that, I’ve taken the liberty to help out some social and business initiatives by giving thought, logistic and contact support. Let’s keep that fact aside now.

From what a lot of people would know of me, I always love it if people tell me their intentions upfront. Due to a recent spree of events, I’ve been baffled by the inability of people to use the word ‘no’ when they need to use it!

I have been involved in organizing a small city-level invitational discussion-based event, for ‘Sit’, for the past 2 months. It has been a slowly progressing thing and has given me enough learning opportunities.

During the course of the 2 months leading upto this very day, I have had atleast 3 dozen people pledging their full support towards this event, atleast 2 dozen people vowing to dedicate their life and soul towards the success of this event and about  a dozen people ‘trying to help out actively’.

The final tally? Just 5-6 people working for the event.

I have learnt not to take any word or commitment from people unless they have a strong previous delivery record. I have learnt that there are enough individuals around us who commit and make no effort to deliver. I have learnt that there are people who have no guts to say they can’t deliver something when they can’t. I have learnt that I should not step into or undertake  any initiative unless I am confident that I can do the entire thing myself. And that any helping hand is only a value addition and isn’t really required.

This can be a cliched assumption but at the moment there is no better bet for me. Let’s see what learning tomorrow has in store for me!

Yours Skeptpically,

P.S. I’m sure those who are meant to understand the idea behind this post will certainly do so. So, there’s really no need to drop names and/or incidents.

P.P.S. Srinath, yes! I understand! I won’t say that “good friends” cliche stuff again! Point taken! Learning gained!

Personal Branding

Hey folks,

It’s been a really long time since I wrote on this space. A lot of things have happened in life since the last time I wrote and it wouldn’t be possible to write about all of them together in a single post. I prefer to split them into various posts, each one focussing on a particular event/incident/learning/person.

This post is about an awesome person whom I came to know recently, Milind Jadhav. Randomness has led me to meet some of my closest friends in life. People like Pavithra, Raja M, Kunal Shah are some examples where both of us have no idea how we first met! That has been the case here too.

Milind is one of those typical branding gurus that you read about in the business newspapers. An IIM Bangalore graduate with a strong passion towards advertising, Milind has about 15+ years of advertising/branding experience behind his name! We both share that little passion.

But, what inspired me was not that. Milind has now almost given up advertising to take up his role as a ‘ Personal Branding Trainer and Life Skills Coach’. That’s what impressed me. I don’t see many people do that in life, especially at that age and with that kind of a background.

Milind has a strong passion towards helping people live their lives in better ways, as well. He writes on Daily Life Lessons about various things that provoke thought about how and why we are the way we are. I see that blog going places in the near future!

Milind is a lot into personal branding and has even developed his own version of a personal branding workshop, The Brand YOU Workshop, from scratch. I had the privilege of attending the inaugural edition of that workshop and I must say it is an amazing piece of work. It gives you a good framework to start off on your approach towards creating a brand around yourself.

Though the process is based mainly on good-old self-introspection, Milind has tried to put in a lot of examples, interesting exercises and other such things and has made the workshop very interesting. Let me warn you that the workshop exercises are heavy on the mind as such but the way Milind takes you through them is probably the best way to do it.

More information about the workshop can be found here. Let me also tell you that there is no popular time-tested kind of a trainer for personal branding in India, as of now. So, it’s pretty fortunate that Milind stays in Chennai and operates out of Chennai primarily!

He’s got a very infectious smile and a good sense of humour, in case you’re wondering if he’s this big corporate grouch!

Chennai's own Personal Branding Trainer!

I guess that’s it for now. Will post on Sit’s first unconference shortly.

Yours Skeptically,

P.S. I have made several minute changes to this blog. The most obvious would be the title of the blog and this signature. I have also enabled comment moderation because this blog is being followed by a lot of respectable people now.