Nasscom Emerge-out conclave 2011

This was my third opportunity to attend NASSCOM conference. Everytime, I come back from each of such visits with good tips, learnings from practicing people and guidance from industry leaders. It was the same this time also. Only difference is that i want to store the experience, which I tend to forget over period of time. Not everything, I heard is relevant to me now, so this stored experience shall become a good place to come back and connect to the past.

It was a perfectly organized event with excellent welcome, provided excellent pen to write on a notepad with well captured agenda and participant names, timely snacks and delicious lunch and a great knowledge sharing experience. I could not attend it beyond 4pm for some urgent work at personal front, so only part of the whole event is captured below. Will update it as per inputs received from readers from time to time.

Right to education and homeschooling

Just came across an news item on RTE and Mr. Sibal’s views on it.
Kapil Sibal’s views on RTE Here is the extract from there

"The right of children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act 2009, wants every child to be in school, but if somebody decides not to send his/her children to school, we are not going to interfere. The compulsion is on the state and not on parent. Parents are free not to send their children to school, but teach them at home. We can not be micromanaging"

This seems to me an open ended statement without answering questions and concerns as listed below:
How does one certify home educated students when they have to enter into college or for formal education. Is there any system to grade them? Is there any system to ensure schools themselves don’t differentiate? Is there any system that ensures well laid out common curriculum for different classes across the country? Is there any bar on age, if no, then why there is so much fuss about minimum age admission?
Does it mean, govt. want to absolve themselves of responsibility of even rendering primary education to all kids in the country?

Commercialized Education System in India

They say we are going through a phase of change. I think that’s an excuse. I believe we are forgetting our roots and into copy-cat move with western world. Much of the drive for this change is not demand of people as we may perceive. It is selfish interest of few who can now make money out of education also.

I am currently pursuing MBA part-time. In one of the family discussions, when someone asked me about the fees of the course and value attached to it. I told 6lacs and increase in knowledge as the value for pursuing future initiatives. The spontaneous reaction from them was that education is now restricted to people who can pay. I had never thought like that before for so many years. Being in job for 17 years, I started evaluating everything as a market of demand and supply and hence costs are justified. Someone charges as much as there are people to pay for it. It is this logic that seeds corruption and “might is right” culture. Not everything can be subject to market economy. Today, unfortunately, institutes like schools and hospitals are operating officially in market based constraints.

Collaborative document/code reviews

I have come across situations time and again where an author creates a document in half-cooked stage and floats it for review for initial comments.

This is typically followed up with a meeting, which is mostly inconclusive, as people debate on something that does not exist or some of them take extreme viewpoints. Except for that half-cooked document there is nothing on the ground level. This is further followed with minutes of meeting, document update by author. After updates, optionally reviewed with moderator, it is again floated for review. Many times at this, document is complete in its contents. However, it may have lots of errors or gaps. Again reviewers have a look at it. Lots of comments pour in. Meeting that follows this is typically of a marathon nature.

India moving into league of products from pure services

Yesterday, I was in the NASSCOM Emerge Conclave. It was a huge gathering at Shangrila hotel near Cannaught Place, Delhi. It was raining heavily, which could have dampened the spirit of people joining there, but I was wrong. It was little late, but was full of enthusiasm. It was an excellent opportunity to listen to some of the brave minds.

Fixed Price with Incentive Contrats

This was a concept, which took me sometime to understand. Thought to share it with all. I could not find much examples also and saw the related questions appearing in mock tests. I didn’t get it in my own certification exam though. Checkout it out..

my E72

Recently bought E72 and spending quite a bit of time in exploring new things there. This is to share my experience with this device as business user in last 3 days.

At the onset, i must say that business and efficient users must stay away from Nokia, they are no longer do good things…add few and drop more..is what they practice. Stable and sturdy phones…true. they continue to hold that reputation.

Matrix to Table conversion in Excel

For presentations and routine data updates, excel sheet is used more in matrix format. And when it comes to moving into some analysis using graphs and pivot, one is stuck because that’s not so straight forward from that matrix structure. Management want to see summarised data which can only done from database/table like structure. Project Managers working directly with data probably work easy with the matrix type of information. One good use of this is staff loading sheet, project versus matrix data etc.
Depiction of matrix versus table is captured below:

Reliance advertisement that can be read as 0.01 paise per second..wow

Check this out, the area that is circled. I at first quick look read it as 0.01 paise. Actually, i read it along with the other line that was saying 50p. and there is no other place they have said the charges are in Rupees.

Great !!…they are known for that enjoy and beware !

Gradually putting your organization on processes using tools

Let me first put Thumb rules
a) evolve from basics
b) standardize at every step that applies to more than one implementation

Lets look at the first stage of evolution