Wave Rider

Hey folks,

Anyone who’s been following my Social Media traces should know pretty well that I was craving (like mad) for a Google Wave invite. After nearly 2 weeks of craving and nearly losing hope, Raja got a direct Google invite. I still haven’t asked him how he got a direct Google invite. Maybe I should, when I meet him tomorrow.

He announced the news on Twitter and I was the first fellow to ask him for a secondary invite. Srinath soon followed suite. Raja promptly invited us both. Nice guy. Very nice guy, I should say!

About two days later, I got an email from Google saying my account was approved for use with Wave. Yes, I was totally wow-ed! I scrambled for the link on the email and promptly signed up.

I’ve been using it for 2 days now and I think it’s a great collaboration tool. Probably, even better than a Wiki in several aspects. A wiki can serve as a web-site or a blog. But, a wave cannot. Atleast, that’s what I’ve understood of it in these 2 days.

The most amazing thing I have noticed in these 2 days is the fact that everything on Wave is a wave. Your settings page is a wave. Your extensions page is a wave. Your Help page is a wave. I guess that should make it easy for those that use the wave API/Protocol to build apps/extensions over it.

Trust me. A wave is a bad idea to be used for personal communication like a group chat. It might seem to serve that purpose amazingly well initially. But, later on, you’ll realise it’s a pain to communicate like that. Thankfully, you can switch off the real-time content updation. Otherwise, you’d have to waste more than 80% of your time in concentrating on who’s typing what.

For collaboration, it is an amazing tool. I realised that from the videos and from my personal use. I created a wave for my startup idea to collaborate with LVS and Vinay. One for TEDxChennai to collaborate with Raja, Jo et al. A wave for ‘Sit‘ to collaborate with LVS (alone, for the moment). A wave for all my (external) blog posts and a To-Do wave.

For all the above uses, I find Google Wave perfect. I still haven’t tried tweeting from Wave et al. I don’t think I really need to do that. I use Firefox extensions for all my social media profiles. Somehow, they seem more convenient.

More in the days to come.

Yours Skeptically,

P.S. I can’t send invites. So please don’t spam this blog.

The Chronicles of Insomnia

Hey folks,

This is my first blog post from college. I’m kinda having fun here. Not started studying, as may be evident from the long gtalk sessions!

It’s been a nice month, this one. I’ve realised that I was more observant than I had ever imagined. I had managed to notice a lot of things that others seemingly missed. Things that relate to most people’s lives for that matter.

Other than that, there has been a lot of progress on the work front. A social media internship for a company called Electrosocial has been the most happening thing for the last 2-3 weeks. I’m kinda liking it a lot. The content is delivered twice a week and packs a lot of insight with relevant links for further reading. I was even asked to post once on their blog and contrary to my guest-post record, the post has come out very well!

You can find it here. About a month of the internship is left and I think it’s only going to be more interesting!

I also got my hands dirty with a small-time market research project for the college involving life insurance. Learnt a lot of things about professionalism and how it doesn’t come with age and 2 years IT work experience for certain people. A lot of networking with some CXOs from the insurance industry as well. Not that I knew enough about insurance to engage them in conversations!

Other than that, I’ve kinda dusted my old stuff a bit and have started working on a small idea I had in the past. I’ve luckily found people to work on it with, this time. So, you can expect a post on that in the future on this blog. It would involve research, more research and even more research. But not the typical geek nerd research! This is more of logical analysis relating to life.

Me and 2 other people here have kinda developed a business idea and would be working on polishing it soon. Hope that works out as well. It’s a nice thing and fits the current market well. There is a funny thingie here! We had actually spent serious time researching for some business ideas and we thought of this one while randomly chit-chatting in class!

I’m going to be involved in organising an event in Chennai in November. Though this is still in the preliminary stages, I’m sure it would pick up momentum in the coming weeks and would be an amazingly fun experience for me.

A couple of conferences, some contests, (hopefully) one research paper, a video for Sit and some work for Mozilla are other stuff in the pipeline.

This post also serves as a reminder for me. I tend to get a little too forgetful and irresponsible if I don’t have my commitments listed in a single place!

As for the post title, I’m kinda experiencing early signs of insomnia. It’s a state I’ve forced onto myself, in a way. I’m hoping to take a week off sometime in end August. Let’s see if that works out!

Yours Skeptically,

P.S. Most of the content on this post was completed in college but the computer guy got mad and drove me off the lab. Apparently, I hear he hates working. Understandable. India still has a lot of scope for change!

When loved ones part with

Hey folks,

Yes, this is one thing that all of us wish doesn’t happen to us. The loss of a loved one. But given the abundance of randomness in life and the fact that it’s beyond human comprehension and control, one needs to cope with everything and life must just go on.

It is interesting to see a workshop being done on this. Most of us take this ‘coping with’ thing on an ad-hoc basis and don’t really realise the need to be prepared to bounce back into life after such a calamity. I am sure that attending such a workshop would be of immense use, not only when the calamity happens in your own life but when it happens in the life of someone you value a lot. This is more of a chain reaction but it is worth the process. Most of the initiatives I support are slow organic chain-reaction-based initiatives. I wish to see this one in such a way too.

Anyway, I’ve attached a DOC file about the workshop, here. Kindly look into it and see if you can attend the workshop. It’s about a month away, on July 17th and 18th. So, don’t say you weren’t informed well in advance!

Yours Skeptically,

P.S. The mini-workshops organised by Career Cats have been postponed. Will post again when they’re scheduled.

Mini Workshops

Hey folks,

I’ve gotten this sudden obsession with attending off-beat workshops that give you new ways of looking at things in life. I’m even putting aside a sum of money as reserve for my workshop spending.

I’ve been exposed to a few such initiatives after meeting Milind, namely LIFE Academy and The Landmark Forum. I have not tried both of them but will do so in the near future, once I can afford them!

Milind started a group (early this year) called Career Cats Chennai which focuses on exposing young corporate professionals to business skills like workplace dynamics, when and why to switch jobs, negotiation skills, how best to sell themselves & land offers and more. As part of the group’s activities, there would be 2 interesting mini-workshops, one each, on June 13th and 14th 2009.

The first workshop (on June 13th 2009) would be on Creating Off-beat Resumes. It is said that the average time that a recruiter spends on a resume is less than 10 minutes. Given the economic slowdown and related business pressures, this could come down to even 3-4 minutes. I have always believed that a good, consistent and clear personal brand is the best way to land a coveted job. In that sense, a resume would be the first-point formal expression of one’s personal brand. You can make it look like any other resume, namely a collection of facts and numbers about yourself. Or, you can make it look like an outright advertisement selling yourself. The difference is a bit subtle and, probably, I’m not getting it through very accurately. I’m sure you’d have all seen ‘Data Sheets’ and ‘Brochures’ of Cell-phones. This is kinda like that. The idea it to make both available but subtly promote the brochure more.

The second workshop (on June 14th) would be on Cracking Job Interviews. To most of us, this will sound like a highly cliche’d idea. But, trust me. It need not always be. If you’ve had my experiences, you’d probably know that an interview is not just about landing the job alone. There is a lot more to it. I don’t want to talk more on this because I might well be intruding into the content of the workshop.

Both the workshops will be delivered by Milind and would be highly focussed, result-oriented, lateral stuff.

I’d be glad to send you more information about the workshops, the venue, the costs et al if you’re interested. Just put a comment on this post and indicate your email ID.

Yours Skeptically,

P.S. I am planning to organise a lecture series, soon. Just looking for a few things to crystallize. More info on that in a separate post.

Of Joe and Hari!

Hey folks,

I just happened to get introduced to the idea of a Johari Window by Milind and decided to get mine through a service. What you see below are the results of my window after some 6 people filled it up. To fill it up go to this page.

Arena (known to self and others) adaptable, cheerful, logical, observant	Blind Spot (known only to others) able, clever, complex, confident, dignified, energetic, friendly, helpful, intelligent, introverted, knowledgeable, modest, nervous, organised, reflective, spontaneous, witty
Façade (known only to self) powerful, trustworthy	Unknown (known to nobody) accepting, bold, brave, calm, caring, dependable, extroverted, giving, happy, idealistic, independent, ingenious, kind, loving, mature, patient, proud, quiet, relaxed, religious, responsive, searching, self-assertive, self-conscious, sensible, sentimental, shy, silly, sympathetic, tense, warm, wise

Dominant Traits

66% of people agree that Prashanth Krishnaswami is cheerful

All Percentages

able (16%) accepting (0%) adaptable (50%) bold (0%) brave (0%) calm (0%) caring (0%) cheerful (66%) clever (16%) complex (16%) confident (16%) dependable (0%) dignified (16%) energetic (33%) extroverted (0%) friendly (33%) giving (0%) happy (0%) helpful (16%) idealistic (0%) independent (0%) ingenious (0%) intelligent (33%) introverted (16%) kind (0%) knowledgeable (50%) logical (16%) loving (0%) mature (0%) modest (16%) nervous (16%) observant (33%) organised (33%) patient (0%) powerful (0%) proud (0%) quiet (0%) reflective (16%) relaxed (0%) religious (0%) responsive (0%) searching (0%) self-assertive (0%) self-conscious (0%) sensible (0%) sentimental (0%) shy (0%) silly (0%) spontaneous (16%) sympathetic (0%) tense (0%) trustworthy (0%) warm (0%) wise (0%) witty (16%)

Created by the Interactive Johari Window on 1.6.2009, using data from 6 respondents.
You can make your own Johari Window, or view Prashanth Krishnaswami’s full data.

I suggest you all try it out too.

Yours Skeptically,

P.S. I am not responsible for the views of the people who filled up this window!

P.P.S. I will be posting on Sit’s unconference and the learning I gained while organized it, in the upcoming weeks as a series of posts.