Will artificial intelligence replaces humans?

AI replaces human completely? 

There are various reports saying that Arifical intellegigence will replace human jobs over a period of time. With multiple research and development being conducted in the area of artificial intelligence and machine learning , people  think that human jobs will be replaced with machines and that will be a big crisis in the job industry.

While the utilization of artificial intelligence will surely make life even more convenient for humankind  Humans can’t be replaced completely 

The one main human quality that can’t be built on machine is emotions . 

Human assured machines will be more powerful than and it can make wonders 

Systematic savings for recurring expenses

We may have recurring expenses every year like insurance bills, electricity bills, school fees, which badly hits our monthly household expenses when comes for the payment. We don't plan for these expenses proactively and mostly get into the financial burden of taking loans to meet these expenses. But planning for these expenses in your monthly household expenses is the best way to meet these payments. Keeping money aside as a liquid cash in the savings account monthly will help you meet these expenses but you may tempt to use these money for any other purpose. Also, you may be reluctant to hold the monthly planned money in the saving account. So, the best way is to open a recurring deposit for every recurring expense, which matures exactly on the month you need the money. This will force you and bring a discipline in you to save the required money easily. You will be able to better plan your monthly budgets and avoid over spending.

My Work life at VMware

I started my work life career at VMware back in November, 2011 and it's a memorable journey so far with so much passion by employer and employees working for each other. With the company goal EPIC2 stands for Execute, Passion, Integrity, Customer and Community.


My journey so far is filled with mixed emotions of work and life balance. Have been in office for more than 12 hours at the same time have fun with the team with quick ice breakers, coffee/tea time, visit gym, play area, take a walk around the campus and then back to work. Utilize the work from home option to avoid to and from travel time to office and then give time to family and friends, medical emergencies as and when needed.


Cultural and Sports activity at company wide reminds us the school/college days of fun, joy, mischievous things done to gain crowd attention.


I have been able to utilize the company's community initiatives to help "Not for Profit" organization in may ways by actively participating in service learning hours and provide them with the financial, technical, non-technical support which reminds us importance of "Being human".

Necessity or Design Thinking is the mother of invention

Since childhood, I have been listening "necessity is the mother of invention". Now a day there is a new buzzword in the market called "Design Thinking".

I attended a few workshops to understand what it is and how it is different from other problem-solving methods. There was one difference between Design Thinking and other problem-solving methods. That difference is, it allows you to start without having a problem.

In other problem-solving methods, you always start with a problem and generate the number of ideas and proceed with the ideation process.

 In Design thinking, the good part is, you may need not to have a problem statement. Design thinking is all about designing the experiences. So you pick an area and try to understand what kind of experiences people are having are having. Based on this learning, you try to find areas which have low experiences and you start working how can I change the experience related to that particular area.

For example, you must have received goods from Amazon.  The packaging of the goods has been a low experience for people as sometimes it is so thin, it will break the goods inside and sometimes it is so must it takes ages to remove all the packaging.

Amazon worked on this experience and providing a standard packaging style for all goods which will ensure goods are safe and it doesn't require many efforts to remove.

This is the power of Design Thinking. So I can say, the necessity is not the mother of invention but finding the necessity of using Design Thinking is the mother of invention.

Why Design Thinking can Transform Learning Experiences

I design learning experiences for a living, and more often than not, I have created fun, engaging, and effective learning solutions. Then, a few years back, specifically, in 2015, I was discussing some creative learning solutions currently in the market with my colleague and I had a realization. Most of my learning in the past year has been from YouTube, Google, and LinkedIn posts from my peers.

My colleague and I realized that the way humans learn has drastically changed-adults and children alike. It's Just-In-Time and On-demand learning, essentially, the everyone was saying "I will learn how I want, where I want, and when I want".

I wondered if the current learning programs are taking into account this dynamic choice-driven learner, and again, through the loop of Google searches-I landed on Design Thinking. My readings were mostly about centered around on how design thinking has transformed products and services. In my head, Design Thinking had the ability to bridge the gap between the  needs of a dynamic learner and the business. Why did I feel Design Thinking had the answers? Simply because, the first step of design thinking is to SPEAK TO THE PEOPLE WHO MATTER-this includes the end user and the project sponsor, the amazing people who will fund the learning solution. The first step of approaching the end user and other stakeholders with an empathetic approach, with an intent to listen, understand their journey, and a non-judgmental perspective on the problem is what convinced me to learn more about design thinking.

While I am yet to apply complete design thinking approach to a problem-the first step of empathetic interviews with my stakeholders about a learning challenge has helped me discover perspectives that I wouldn't have had otherwise, including finding suitable learning solutions. More on that later-thanks for reading. :)

Design Thinking in Instructional Design

Instructional Design has for the longest time drawn from Psychology and behavioral sciences to provide a robust methodology to developing content. Over a period, Instructional Design has grown out of the shadow of its founding theories and has evolved to keep in line with technological advancements in the learning world. 

If one has been facing issues with acceptance of their learning solution, then the possibilities are that they are running short of ideas that work in the present world. So, how does one ensure that their learning designs are relevant on a continued basis? The foundational theories are not going to change. Perhaps, the solution lies in Design Thinking?

 

Life in Bangalore last two months

Moved to B'lore with lot of inputs from friends about the place - happening city, all cuisines available, cool weather, lot of opportunities, good places to go around, can find lot of friends, good learning places, etc. etc.

Actual experience: Yes, many of them were true - could taste good food, variety of shops - u name it and could find it, weather is pleasant, good gym/sports facilities, everything delivered at your doorstep ....

... but being in Whitefield area things that I was not aware of - airport is soooooo far :(  ,  yet to find friends, bought a cycle to exercise but cud'nt drive bcos of the road conditions and the dust & weather, to top it all lost all my shoes kept outside the apartment, though the travel time to a location is only 20-30 mins need to wait for ~45 mins to get a uber/ola ...

... have hopes that with a little more time would get a good grip of things around here and can plan my stay to have a better experience

Design Thinking Course @ IIMB Bngalore

Recently I had an opportunity to attend Design Thinking course @ IIMB Bangalore. The course DT has left me with wonderful experience. It was really an intense training with lots of learning. DT has five phases which are: Define, Empathy, Idea, and Prototype & Test. Each phase is really different and we had live examples to learn about.  Define: Here we learnt about how to Define the problem. Various scenarios were given to choose and our took one of the problem and defined it.  -"Work Life Balance"Empathy: In this phase, we went around to meet related people and did an interview with relevant question about works life balance.Ideas: We generated lots of ideas in this phase. It was really good to see different ideas flowing from everybody in the group.Prototype: This phase helped us to build a strong prototype of the solutions that we arrived on.Test: Here we requested for the feedback from relevant people and we recorded and amended in our prototype. The course in IIMB was really memorable. Here the campus was wonderful with great serenity. The building and garden looks really wonderful. It was nostalgic as I was able to relate the campus and classes with my college days.  If given an opportunity, I would surely come up to some more courses at IIMB. Thanks for the great learning opportunity.

Learning experience at IIMB

As a part of my Organisation Development program i was shortlisted for the Talent program, where i needed to attend two external training.Based on my google research and few colleagues from my office finally, shortlisted IIMB Design Thinking program which would fit my development profile as Embedded developer.

This is my first time to the IIMB Campus which is awesome with all greenery and pollution free zone. Coming to the course Design thinking which i had always thought that thinking should be out of box.But after this training i learned that first is to think inside the box with the available resource.

One more important thing which i was able to relate the first half of training was a clear case of the product which we are developing in my project.I learned how we can avoid such mistakes further and apply this.Also the user experience which i was able to relate to the customer experience feedback which we get as a part of product release.Learned a lot of more things in the training which i need implement in my day to day activities like appreciating with Bright spots, Mapping the problems.

Entering the creative realm

As a kid, I was always looking at creative ways to spend time - drawing, making toys, projects for classrooms. However, with age, I lost touch with the creative side of my mind. Until recently, a sequence of events, started bringing out the creative flow of work. I have now started working on writing stories, short snippets, poems, and craft work with different materials. Though it seemed impossible when I initially thought about it, my motivation was strong enough to continue working on these things. What I realized when all this happened was that the aspect of creativity as a child within me was never lost, it was simply masked in the hundreds and thousands of tasks and responsibilities I had taken upon myself.

Today, if I am confidently able to surprise a person around me with my creation, I owe all the appreciation to the set of events that transformed me from a boring, regular individual to one going behind creative pursuits. I now wish I could continue doing this for a long, long time to come and continue to think, act, and pursue creative avenues to surprise someone and bring a smile to their lips, amidst the busy nature of our lives. What I also realized that, with the more creative things I did, the more inner joy and happiness I experienced, both while creating and while someone looked at and expressed their feelings. Not only that, it also seems therapeutic to get out of the routine task of being employed and think differently of the world

Over crowded Engineers in India

Hello...

In the today scenario in the India opportunities are really a lesser then the day by day Engineers are pass out and the so many engineers are not getting job even in a small factory

i want to share my experience that one day i have send some materials to my vendor through the Tempo and he is almost reaches near the vendor but he forgot one Invoice copy now he is call and said me " Hello Sir i am Vishal and i forgot one invoice copy but materials was reach safely please speak to Vendor and give your confirmation" i asked him who are you he said i am tempo drive sir,
i shocked he is speak in fluent English even than me and  get detail why he is doing a job like a tempo driver but the reason is he is not greeting job as he is engineer.. so i think what will be the Engineers future in india.. 

Does professional certifications valued more than experience

Now a days there are many courses both online and classroom trainings where we get certifications.  But are these certifications are a way to say that you have gained the additional knowledge. Are these certifications mandatory? 

For someone who have worked on particular field for years together it seems unnecessary to have a certification, which is true. But for someone who is looking to hire  a specific skill and who does not know you personally,  certifications are a  way to say that you are skilled in the particular field. Also, when there is credibility issue in the profiles which are being circulated in the job market, certifications gives a confidence to your recruiter that you have atleast the basic knowledge in a particular field. Also, these certifications gives you the latest knowledge in the field you have worked on and help us to bridge the gap. 

Yes certifications alone cannot define a person's capability, but it can be a good start in conveying your capability to someone you don't know. 

No sleep.. what next??

Scenario:
12 a.m.
NO SLEEP...
Opens chat.


Friend:
Hey there!
How are you doing?
All fine?
Ready to read a blog?

You:
"But...reading is boring!"
"Why no pictures?"
"Why not a video?"

Friend:
Let's try with this blog.
How about making it interesting?
Further questions...

Friend:
What maybe your hobbies?

You:
"But..who really follows them?"

Friend:
What about your fav movie?

You:
Then you say...I watch a lot.

Friend:
Maybe I could be specific.
Let's try..
Ever watched 'evil dead'?

You:
Eww!
Sleep is better*****

How to make India without beggers on roads, railway stations, at tollgates etc...

Hi everyone,

Daily , I travel from ecity to hosur during course of my travel daily when i was crossing tollgate at attepele i am seeing many people begging with infants. i saw the same lady with 3 kids. dont know how can she have 3kids of same age. so it is obvious that she might kidnapped some infants.

But unfortunately that tollgate staff also not doing anything and allowoing them for begging. Many other small kids ( below 7 years ) also begging at that place.

I am thinking to consult that particular manager of that tollgate and ask his suggestions to eliminate it

 

My first Visit to IIM Bangalore

This is not my first time in Bangalore or Bengaluru as it is called nowadays... But this is the first time I got a chance to visit IIM-Bangalore. All the years I have lived here, I never got the chance to see what is inside these big walls which look like an Amazonian forest from outside.

Thanks to an EEP program on Design Thinking sponsored by the company I work for, I finally got my chance! And I am here blogging about the same experience from inside IIM-B. First thing that surprised me is the lush green campus! The number of trees all around and the overall greenery is really a big contrast compared to what you see outside. The temperature drops by at least 5 degrees when you are inside. On my first day here, I had a chance to walk around the campus after lunch for almost an hour from 2pm to 3pm. And I never felt that I am walking outdoors on an August afternoon. It was such a refreshing walk and I almost forgot the task in hand - Do some survey on people we see on a topic that we had selected as part of the training.

The classrooms and the whole architecture of the buildings are really amazing. They really match the trees and greenery outside. May be a real architect can tell the technical details and names of how it is done and named, but for someone like me, in layman terms, it looks like rock structures in the middle of a jungle. This gives a very natural environment to learn I think.

The sessions have been very interesting so far. A lot to learn and take back home/work. But the experience of just being here will be something that will be cherished forever!

My way of Life

God has finalized two alfabates. 'B & D' stand for Birth & Death..The middle letter 'C' is mean for Choice of life,its the totally depend on our approach & attitude to look at it.
I have chosen a my way of life to find out ultimate aim of happiness.there are some do & don't as listed below..

Particular		Action
The most selfish 1 Letter word	I	Avoid
The most Satisfying 2 Letter word	We	Use
The most Poisonous 3 Letter word	Ego	Transform
The most Used 4 Letter word	Love	Value
The most Pleasing 5 Letter word	Smile	Keep
The Fastest Spreading  6 Letter word	Gossip	Ignore
The most Hard Working  7 Letter word	Success	Achieve
The Burning 8 Letter word	Jealousy	Distance
The most Powerful 9 Letter word	Knowledge	Acquire
The most Divine 10 Letter word	Connection	Pursue

Particular		Action
The approached,i have adopted is very helpful in day to day life.Satisfaction of our soul is very very important .As you are happy,its become very easy to make others happy.

Education Sytem in INDIA

Govt School on par with Private School?

Education is very important for all the children, but we see that a large group of children, is not provided with the Basic Education ( Till call 10th) on par with private schools.

Few Positive facts.

• Teachers are Well Qualified
• Entrance test Conducted.
• The selection process is good.

Where are we missing the race between Govt Vs Private school ?

Citizen's solution to Bangalore Traffic Issues

Bangalore is a great place to live, except for the traffic jams. We spend our time, money and energy in commuting to our work and back. 10 km/hr is the norm in areas with many companies. What do we do to reduce the traffic jams?

Some ideas to reduce the number of vehicles on the road:

Car pooling
Apps like QuickRide help for car pooling. There has been concerns raised on the legality of such apps, which needs to be addressed by the transport authorities. 

Usage of public transport

Though the BMTC bus services is fairly good, the cleanliness and the comfort of the buses have to be improved to shift the car users to bus. Last mile connectivity is another pain in Bangalore, with autos fleecing passengers when there are no other options. We can have tempo travellers or taxis taking round trips with frequent trips. The metro feeder bus frequency can be increased to every 10 minutes.

Many a time, the road is jammed as people do not follow traffic rules. At times, the guidance is not clear enough for users to follow. To solve this issue, we can have crowdsolutioning. The markings on the road have to be clear that the vehicle rider has to take the exact path, say, left most lane to take the left turn. Right most lane to take the right turn. When it is a 2 lane road and there are 3 paths to take, which lane should one take to take to go to middle road?
Small groups of citizens can take a road, make the markings, where you can take turns, which lane to take for which direction, where stopping is possible, nearby parking locations for a road etc. The lane assignment can be based on the traffic survey done. If more people are taking right turn, more lanes have to be assigned for going the right turn. The timing for certain traffic rules can also be indicated, say one way from 7 AM to 7PM. This can be called Citizen Social Responsibility.

My experience visiting Sakleshpur: Weekend Gateway 
I've visited a place called Sakleshpur, which is located in the Western Ghats of Karnataka. This is the most adventurous trip I had so far and I'm sharing my same experience here. We ware of 4 people who decided unexpectedly let us go to Sakleshpur on Friday evening (i.e 10th AUG 2018), this was just a week before heavy monsoon which caused scariest floods in Kerala and Karnataka.

Here is our journey, on Saturday(i.e 11th AUG 2018) morning we departure to Sakleshpur without knowing how is the weather over there. First, we wanted to visit Malhalli falls and go to homestay. Drive to Malhalli falls was like a test for my driving skills, seriously it was raining heavily and we're not able to see the road on top of it road is very narrow but the excitement we got after seeing the Malhalli falls was unexplainable
 

After seeing this beautiful falls we're like this trip is awesome and more than this what we experienced on the next day was the best adventure we did that is Trekking to Asia Longest Tunnel which is 600meters long. Journey to this tunnel is via deep jungle forest trekking

how to improve performance in the product based project

To improve performance can follow the below points:

1. Designing the architecture in proper

2. Use design patterns

3. Style of code has to be proper

4. Use pooling mechanism

5. Re factor if any

1.Designing the architecture in proper:

Application (software) architecture

Serves as the blueprint for individual application systems, their interactions, and their relationships to the business processes of the organization.

2. Use design patterns:

Single responsibility principle

a class should have only a single responsibility (i.e. changes to only one part of the software's specification should be able to affect the specification of the class).

Open/closed principle

"software entities … should be open for extension, but closed for modification."

Liskov substitution principle

"objects in a program should be replaceable with instances of their subtypes without altering the correctness of that program." 

Interface segregation principle

"many client-specific interfaces are better than one general-purpose interface."

Dependency inversion principle

one should "depend upon abstractions, [not] concretions."

3. Style of code has to be proper:
find out sonar cube problems and rectify the problems, if possible revamp the code and make modularity and as possible as simple.

4.Use pooling mechanism:

5.Re factor if any:

My Sandakpu - Phalut Trek.(3500mts altitute)

I am Maninder Gupta completed my b.tech from NIT Durgapur in West Bengal.

In my b.tech final year we got full december as holidays, few friends of mine and I are staying in college, so to feel some refreshment my friend prakash and I wanted to go to tour for 3 days. Then we opened India map and ruled out some places as we cant go due to time constraint and last we were left with darjeeling and guwahati. We saw on internet that there is 2 days trek in darjeeling which costs 6000 rupees where all the stuff like clothing, shelter and food will be provided and we were excited and want to go to darjeeling for trekking.  From durgapur we need to go place called siluguri and then to darjeeling. And two more friends want to come with us and now we are four. Next day itself we booked tickets to siluguri by bus and went there. And from there we have reach Darjeeling by sumo. And finally we reached darjeeling at 12 noon. We made prebooking of hotel in darjeeling.

We don't know anything about trekking and prakash and me are in sandals. We went to some guys we will make arrangements for trekking and we came to know that there is a Trek called Sandakpu and Phalut trek which takes 6 days to complete and food costs around 300 rupees per meal and room costs 200 to 300 per person per day and guide takes 800 per day, he comes along with us and shows the route. This is all the information we know and we don't have enough money to afford 300 per meal and we don't know how places will be where we are trekking. We all started with zero knowledge about places. Just word trekking made us exited and also they said that we can see base of kangchenjunga mountain and can see everest regions, those excited us and we wanted to stay in tent.

As we went with less money we decided to take food by our selves. So we went to nearest more and bought  stuff like magie, kurkure, bread, jam, milk packets, milk powder, coffee packet and stuff like this. As we don't have trekking shoes, we bought 2 pairs of woolen socks for each and we all are set for trekking.

Next day morning 10 am we started our trekking, We met our guide, he looked so serious, we though it is going to be bored trip but it hasn't gone in that way. Our guide showed how many kilometers we have to walk and what are the places we are going to stay for next 6 days and what are the altitudes of that places.

We walked 83 kms in six days and our highest altitude is 3500 kms where we can see ocean of clouds.

How the six days went will be published further.

It is only of the place and many more exiting experiences are coming next.

Why Design Thinking ???

Does Design Thinking sound complex or abstract when you say or utter it or it seems like a normal phrase only??

Actually I do not know what it is but I do believe for making any idea work or any module work or to accomplish any task, we do designing so that we can make things in place to work as expected or as thought of.

Design thinking helps you to identifying the problem then helps to give the solutions for the same as well.
Most of the problems' solutions lie within the problems itself if the problem statement is transparent and clear.
Identifying the problem itself generates lots of ideas to solve that problem.

How to identify a clear, transparent problem and how Design Thinking can help you in that. Let's bring something on plate to understand this.

 Design Thinking is pillared by it's 3E core elements.

- Empathy
- Experimentation
- Experience

How we identify a problem?? Where we see the pain or where we are empathized by others for their pain/concern, we see a problem so Empathy - to feel the pain which other's feel is a way to identify or seek for a problem.

When you identify a problem once, you become curious to solve it. Now to solve the problem you do lot of experiments on the ideas to solve the problem. Here core element Experimentation comes in picture.

Design Thinking says
Fail early, fail freely and fail inexpensively for this element.

When you do experimentation to solve the problem, you experience the outcomes/feedback from the people or from the observation which again loop the cycle of experimentation. Experience redefines the experimentation cycle and so this also play a role of core element in Design Thinking.

Want to write more, will continue....

       

Rooky Dad

29th June 2018 was the day we got a precious gift in the form of a son. To hold your beautiful healthy baby for the very first time is the most exciting experience I ever had and the most terrifying as well. 

Having no idea what a tiny cute little thing is capable of I picked the baby in my arms in the most gentle way possible and adored him for hours. 

Along with the baby came new responsibilities some were known and some unknown. And the learning curve had to be steep. 

And one thing you learn is babies are brutal in their feedback. You make a mistake they cry. You forget to clean they cry. Sometimes you feel they cry just for the heck of it.

One thing most precious to me was my sleep and now what ever is left of it. 

To be continued...

My Goa Experience post DEMONETISATION!!!

                                         

Whenever anyone of us think about Goa, all of us visualize the scenic BEACHES  where you can roam around with your group of friends or your partner (Hand in Hand):), OCEANS where in you can njoeee all sorts of adventure sports, Shacks where you can just chill and take sun bath and obviously shack  enjoyment is not there till the time you are having booze around :), local markets etc etc and list can go on n on n on.....

With all these things in mind, we (me and my wife) planned our trip to Goa in year 2016 and that too month of November.

This was our 4 day trip and it started from 30th November. When we left for Goa, we were carrying enough cash as on 8th of November, one PATAKA happened and that was DEMONETISATION.

Post reaching there we enjoyed fully and were lost in the beauty of Goa:)
After couple of days, a strange voice started coming from my wallet and you guys won't believe what that was:

MITRONNNN, DEMONETISATION ka asar abhi gaya nahi h:P

And than we realized that we are almost out of cash and than comes the reality, for complete third day we were looking for ATM's to take out cash but with no luck:(

We stood in a queue for almost 2 hours but when our number was about to come that ATM was out of stock.
It happened with us for one more ATM but with some luck on our side, we got the cash from third ATM:)

So, one complete day was gone of our much awaited vacation.

Still, this is a kind of experience which we will going to remember for sure... will laugh about it.... will going to say about it that YES we experienced the Demonetisation (a good thing happened to our country after a long time although we were at the receiving end) effect :)

Life of a software engineer

IT industry is growing because technology will evolving day by day but it simultaneously makes software engineers life more difficult because they have to continuously update themselves.
Life of a software engineer always unexpected there are always different phases of life

In College:
      We always have friends and and different subjects to study but in college they mostly focus
on theoretical aspects rather than practicals. In college we mainly focus on problem solving approach. We talk to friends sometimes we think about our own startups 


  Work:
There are many types of companies in software industries like service based companies and product based company
  In a product company, and in a team where new and interesting stuff keep happening - its good (I have been lucky, I should say!). 

Work life balance:

Most of the it company has five days working but sometimes you have to come on Saturday and Sunday as well if their is product delivery deadline. you have to take control of life, no company can help you here. There can be some stressful days and late nights, but hey! everyday cannot be a Sunday! 

Are we too much dependent on Salary? Have we built a system that runs with Salary Alone? Am I going to be salaried till I die?

Friends, many of us in early 40s and many time the question crosses our mind is are we going to be working for ever for salary and wait for the salary credit message to mobile by month end ?  What happens if I don't get a month salary ?  EMI, X..Y..Z.. payments ? wah... head spinning :-) Am I a CEO material to grow endlessly (is it so) ? Am I important to an organization if I'm not growing further? Am I in the JIT production line of Axing like old trees!!!  Do I need to act as a leader even if I'm different ...  Gurus says we'll have to reinvent ourselves every decade and try to do something new to keep us curious and going? Am I not taking risk to do the one I'm passionate about? Is it called mid life crisis?

Me to churning it all for a while till I got some enlightenment in my early 40s... 

If (none of the question above interests you)
then
     return;
else
     go to MyPerspective;

MyPerspective

It is unfortunate that many of us narrow our wisdom to experiment and experience to the work and stick to the outcome called salary for years during our young and energetic phase of life.  Keep increasing our commitment based on salary and keep our risk appetite low so never think of anything beyond..  The enlightenment happens only post 40s when we already lost good number of years...

I can hear your mind voice... Oh man, we all know that.. what do you want to suggest here... I'm not going to propose something big... I'm just going to say few simple steps... You no need to be super rich.. no need to be smart... no need to have lot of free times...  no need to be settled in life...

All what we have to do is start certain experiments based on your ideas/interests as early as possible, if possible even during your schooling...

I'm good at art... can I perfect this skill and start doing interior design, freelance art work...?
I'm good at talking... Can I perfect this skill and become freelance/part time RJ or VJ....?
I'm good at convincing people... Can I perfect this skill and become a part time/freelance marketer?
I'm good at cooking... Can I perfect this skill and become a part time/freelance chef/cook/own a small restaurant?
I'm good at application development.. Can I do freelance application development?
I'm good at writing.. Can I write blogs/books/social media articles?
I'm good at farming.. Can I do/teach terrace garden or take up part time farming?
I have spare land... Can I grow trees there...
I'm good at something.. Why don't you become trainer/consultant?

etc..

etc..

All these you can do when you are working for bread and butter.. but the key is don't break... start  it as early as possible and keep doing it....  if you are good at many don't mind picking up 2 or 3 interest areas to pursue...

Everyone is good at one or other thing other than doing job, all it needs is perseverance and commitment to keep doing it....

You may be surprised what happens by doing it...  Yes my friend, this is where the crux to get away from all the worries pointed out in the first paragraph..

Here you are nurturing the passion.. perfecting a skill of your interest.... it is not too far, you will start earning from it too if you can make a business model out of it...

I'm passionate about trees...  In last 1 year I have grown my mini forest of multi variety tree... I'm passionate about healthy eatable products.... I have started a small shop of natural and traditional products with likely minded people.... I'm confident of my tree farm becoming rich source of earning... I'm confident of my venture with friends becoming big FMCG brand...  For all these I haven't spent in crores.. haven't taken big loans... don't spend much time.. all with small saving I had and from shelling out some portion or the salary.... 

Such small positive steps helps you to build confidence in you that your job is not all about your life... life is beyond job and the interests beyond can become your business or money earning aid...

Job has it's own instability... during difficult time the interest you developed outside job would definitely helps you to withstand...  You will not worry of what happens if I loose Job..  Who knows you may quit the job and become a successful entrepreneur...


All what you need is.. identify your skill... perfect your skill.. nurture it with perseverance and commitment.. make a business model.... make it repeatable... keep you away from worries... become an entrepreneur...  above all be happy about life....

It is just my view... I believe there is nothing right or wrong or always perfect... appreciate your views and success stories...

Thanks...

Mohan....

Adventure sports in India

Most of us love adventures and are in constant look out for new arenas of fun. Adventure sports fits right in and gives the adrenaline rush enthusiasts crave for. The business is not new and has been there for decades - just that it's gaining more commercial value and popularity each day. Consumer spectrum is decently broad, investment is considerably low and profits are marginally higher - everything which attracts more and more people to start their own business. Definitely it has given a boost, to both tourist attraction and people's curiosity to try out new activities. But it also raises an important question - are enough safety measures taken by the organizations/business owners?

I have 2 experiences to share. I went on a vacation to Andaman last year, and was excited to see the number of water-sports being offered. There was scuba-diving, snorkeling, sea-walk etc. - activities that would take you under water to give an overwhelming experience of aqua-life.

Automatic graph monitoring and anomaly detection

In today's world for any product , monitoring the product performance is of utmost importance and if often a product is judged on it.For instance facebook went down for 5 min on August 3 and it became such a big news even though it hardly is an essential commodity.

So today almost all products produce Key Performance Indicator(KPI's) which is almost always time series related data , most of the products already have alarming mechanism integrated into it , but the issue which is most profound in this way is firstly identifying hard upper and bottom limits which sometimes become very challenging for parameters which are very dynamic like number of connection to a server, how many connections if a good upper limit on it 100 or 1000 or 100000 , it can hugely vary depending on special occasion like e commerce site during sale can get huge sudden traffic for which hard values might not be a best strategy , also another issue we face is how many alarms are good enough , because for each new alarm you need to write code for sending and clearing alarm, and even if one KPI needs to be added again lot of coding needs to be done.


so here a generic approach to detect anomaly in patterns and relating it to other other time series data can be critical, every product is making graphs today but analysis of graph is mostly done post outage to get any insights or there are dedicated resources to do so, but i think there has to be a better and more aggressive approach.

So the anomaly detection s/w that we are proposing will detect sudden spikes in trend of time series data and further it will correlate  it to other time series data so see any pattern similarity or correlation between aggressively before issue requires much performance impact. So suppose if response time of railway site suddenly spiked it will not only detect it , but it will correlate it with other time series data like number of visitors on site or CPU utilization of server  or DB response time and can help us in getting better insights just as we would have done by seeing a graph but in more real time.So if now it finds that there is sudden spike in site's response time and also at the same time sudden increase in DB response time we can raise an alarm with better insights.

How do you feel Village Life ?

I like my home town its very beautiful. This is the small village and its covered by full of cashew net form. We have one big lake where people used to take bath and enjoy their swimming's.
We have big temple called Mariyaman, when get down from the bus we can see this powerful god.

We never use the A.C there and used to get the fresh Air, even people used to sleep in front their house. Our Village is Square based once entered and can  come out easily.

We used to have one big festival in every summer and this will go almost 10 days festival, people from their village are staying outside will come for this festival and enjoy with their family. Since it is the summer season and they used to enjoy their festival for 10 days. People used meet their friends during this festival and more happy. Villagers will arrange during the final festival day Orchestra, 2- big Theru, 1- elephant, 1- Kerala band , etc ...

People will not approach the police easily for any kind of dispute, since they speak internally and solve this issues within themselves.

Also People used to work every day except the Saturday, We have every Saturday one small market is running near to the village and people used to go by cycle or Bike or even bus and enjoy their holiday which is on Saturday.

Overall I feel the village life is very good and enjoyable.

What Chatbot's can do to improve Customer Service?

More and more businesses are choosing AI chatbots as part of their customer service team. There are several reasons for that. Chatbots can answer customers’ inquiries cheaply, quickly, in real-time. Another reason is the ease of installation of such chatbot: once you have fine live human chats (which can be used as training set), it takes a couple of minutes to integrate a chatbot with it.

Here are the top advantages that can help to build more trust with customers by using AI chatbots solutions:

#1 Quick and Unbiased Answers  😊

Chatbots don’t need to sleep. They can immediately tackle issues no matter if it’s 4 am or 10 pm. This is crucial for companies targeting millennial's (who can be impatient). This allows you to improve customer support and the customer experience.Even the answer given by Chatbots are unbiased which can be biased if humans are addressing those queries.

#2 Inexpensive and Increase Efficiency 😊

Chatbots can handle a high volume of requests with similar responses. This makes them perfect for dealing with frequently asked questions. Besides, chatbots don’t need time to search for answers as human agents do. This helps reduce service time and operating costs by as much as 65 to 70 percent.

Chatbots can direct customers to a live agent if the AI can’t settle the matter. This lets human agents focus their efforts on the heavy lifting. AI chatbots also increase employee productivity. Globe Telecom automated their customer service via Messenger and saw impressive results. The company increase employee's productivity by 3.5 times. And their customer satisfaction increased by 22 percent.

#3 Error Cases Reduced - Make Customer more Happy 😊

AI chatbots make fewer errors while answering customer inquiries than human agents do. Why? Because their cognitive technology interprets customers’ responses and provides accurate, automated answers. Chatbots have a lot of memory. This reduces the chances of misinterpreting a query or offering an incorrect solution.

#4 Increased customer engagement 😊

Chatbots can enhance customer experience and they it as pleasant as human interactions .They can strike up a conversation with any customer about any issue at any time of day. They engage in friendly interactions with customers. Besides, virtual assistants only give a bit of information at a time. This way they don’t tire customers with irrelevant and unnecessary information. Chatbots can maintain conversations and keep customers on your website longer.

Why can’t we make our train journeys safer and smarter with technology?

Are we using really technology to improve our life? If yes, why still we notice railway TC carrying a printed list and go for verification and the people in RAC and wait list wait for TC to allocate the berth.

Do we have options to improve current situations and bring transparency in the system? Why can’t we use existing technologies and provide a connected touch screen in coach and handle many of the activities of the train travel.

Like….

Reservation booking: While booking ticket, passenger should be able to view the coach layout with berth status and choose the available and preferred berth.
Profile check: Profile check can be done while booking (like Adhaar based)
Verification of passenger while boarding train: Passenger himself can complete the verification at available connected touch device in coach.
Swapping of berths: We notice many times, people with families or with sr. citizens requesting for swapping. By using this touch screen they can swap the berths.
Dynamic booking: Dynamic booking facility, can be provided to passengers. Passengers who don’t have a reservation, they can buy general ticket and board train. If they find any vacant seat online, during travel they can book the berth. The Railway can collect amount by credit cards.
Always correct data with the Railway: We notice often, when an accident happens, the railway struggle to get the exact number of passengers on the train. Many people board trains with general tickets, waiting list and also without tickets. Currently there is no way to have their status about boarding. If we have a device, we can control this type of problems.
Bribing TC/TC Demanding bribe for allocating berth: With transparency, bribes can be controlled.
Preference for berth allocations during travel: Many times we notice, TC violates the rules and allocate berth to general ticket people by taking bride. This can be controlled with dynamic booking.

Challenge the status quo

Do you think innovating is difficult? Do you often get asked to be ‘Innovative’ at work? Well, I have often been in situations where I have felt intimidated by the sheer breadth of what to do and where to start. Can you guess what the image below is, it is the very first version of what is now called a Rubik’s cube.

Source: https://ruwix.com/the-rubiks-cube/first-rubiks-cube-prototype-invention/

A group of eight wannabe innovators were ushered into a conference room in the tony Koramangala locality. We were all geared up with biases, tools and prejudices of our own for innovation. Guess what? All that was about to be thrown out of the window! Over the next two days, we would be debating, facing our deepest fears (read biases), learning and unlearning about prototyping, collaborating, preparing challenge boards, thrashing out case studies, among other activities. Our current state was pretty much like this crude Rubik’s cube.

     This was about to change.

Day 1

So here we begin, we learnt about the categories of innovation and you do not necessarily need to ‘INVENT’ something to be called an innovator. There were four broad categories where we could innovate - Product, Process, Customer Experience and Business Model. We also had the point driven home when we were told – ‘Patents are only useful if it adds value to a larger populace’. Point taken!

            We were then guided into the actual approach of systematic innovation, the 8 steps which can be broadly classified into three categories – Pipeline problem, Velocity problem and about Batting Average.

            We next discussed about having a – ‘Challenge Book’ that would be the place where challenges can be made available for other stakeholders to see. It is also important to have a clarity on these challenges and allow for anyone to suggest for solutions to a problem. Often, we are stuck with a bias that an 'outsider' cannot offer a solution to my problem.

            We were then handed over a case study, popularly called the Grossmann and Patrick IBM Problem. A classic case study about how a frontline employee – Grossman, who was not responsible for Innovation, Creativity or Strategy almost single handedly got an ailing IBM (in the 90s) into the internet era. But wait, was he able to do it singlehandedly? Nope, what he needed was a person who believed and backed his idea. A Champion. In most cases, we need people convinced about your idea to take it forward and to socialize it amongst the larger audience. Some of the questions we answered about this case study got us a broader perspective into some of the roles needed for a successful innovation.

An Idea either finds a Champion or it dies

Also, about some of the attributes of an Innovator, broadly a person who is curious, does a lot of experiments, can communicate well and collaborate.

Day 2

The most fascinating thing about the session on this day is about how we face our biases, it was mind altering, to put it mildly. We were shown a few monostable optical illusions. We were shown a couple of images/ gifs, which each of us saw it from a biased view (and each of us strongly thought that his/ her version was the correct one). We literally could not believe our eyes. Imagine the amount of havoc it something mixes up your vision and how it is wired to your brain!

And the best part of making us realize about these biases - the video of the Backwards Bicycle.

And, guess what - Cognitive Biases are supposedly much stronger than optical biases. We also realized how difficult it was to think thorough our biases. And when it comes to innovation we need to park some of these biases from not altering our decision. Something that is very difficult, what is easier is to be ‘aware’ of the biases and to an extent not allow them from interfering with our thought process.

Is failure an opportunity?

Failure is often treated with negative adjectives such as sadness or disgust. We are often scared that a failure will create a negative impression about us to our team or leads. We think that if we fail, it will get us a negative grade in our performance.

To understand whether it is actually a true, let us walk down the memory lane to our childhood. Do we remember how we started walking? If not ourselves, we would have definitely seen babies in our family or our siblings their attempt to start walking. The first time they attempted they have failed. The have fallen down. The immediate next reaction was to get up and try again.

The same philosophy applies almost everywhere. One of the important techniques to answer a question is by eliminating the wrong answers. You tick off the answer that you are sure is not right. Why don’t we apply the same, in our experiment or while ideating. When our idea fails, we just discovered a way that the idea should not have been pursued. It might be  that we just need to change the steps to develop the ideas or even we might be experimenting with the wrong audiance.

To justify this thought, let us look at some of the products stories and how they succeeded.

Bubble Wrap:  The initial intention of creating a bubble wrap was create a trendy new textured wallpaper. This was a total failure, until when IBM used it to package their newly launched computers while transporting them. It became a success overnight and today it is a defacto choice for packaging any delicate items.

WD-40: After 39 times of unsuccessful attempts the company perfected the formula and thus the name WD-40 “Water Displacement perfected on the 40^th try”

So failures is not then end of the end of the road. It is just a step closer to success. The only hardship is to stay focused and persist the idea till you succeed. There is always a right time and a right way to present an idea.

In words of Henry ford, "Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently".

Credits

https://www.forbes.com/sites/sujanpatel/2015/01/16/8-successful-products-that-only-exist-because-of-failure/

http://www.businessinsider.com/wd-40-failed-39-times-before-becoming-successful-2015-7

2nd Inning

2nd Inning

 

There is a general belief that everyone deserves a second chance. If you believe in it, then you are on my side to explore this further in the space of innovation. If you don’t believe in it, then also reading it further may force you to re-think your position. Many companies, organizations, and teams run innovation campaign at small and big level. They come in various forms like drives, hack fest, hackathon etc. Ideas are collected and at the end winners are awarded. As soon as the campaign is over, things comes to full stop. The ideas that did not made it to winners circle are completely forgotten. Even the submitters of those ideas feels it may not be worth taking forward. In short, the one time drive killed thousands of potential idea in the process of giving light to few at the top. These forgotten ideas deserves a second chance.

Ideas that did not made to top may be a case of insufficient details, miss-aligned reviewers, time pressure, or articulation. Sometimes the idea may be too early in the game and market is not yet ready to understand or accept. These ideas may have hidden potential in other areas that the reviewers or sponsors are not ready to focus or invest. They may be supplementary or complementary to other ideas or products. All these suggests they should not be ignored. They should be re-looked with fresh perspective and fresh mind from time to time regularly. No idea should have an expiry date unless it is already implemented in the same exact form. No idea should be ignored at review stage.

Often questions arise on the feasibility to maintain such idea pools. That should be easy to resolve in today’s world. Storage has become cheaper. Tagging and search technologies have improved. Crowd sourcing, community funding, and VCs are always eager to invest. Further, the value of such databases is much exceptional if someone decides to utilize it at max. In short, it is worth investing in such ideal pools as against ignore them as lost. By giving them a second chance, you are keeping the submitter hope alive. The submitter mature over a period of time and they themselves will see their ideas morph into new ideas over a period of time. The submitter themselves will maintain their ideas with latest development in the world around them. Wikipedia is one such example where submitter maintain the content in absence of any returns. Having such idea pools may result in small and supplementary ideas to existing products. Having such idea pools may connect submitter to potential champions or sponsors in future when the time is right to invest. Having such idea pools will keep the hopes alive for many and becomes a source of inspiration to continue on new ideas.

 
In conclusion, the idea of giving second chance to all ideas has merit and potential much beyond our current imagination. It may open doors into infinity to prosper innovation for ages to come. In games like cricket it is the 2^nd inning which is important to conclude the game. Hence, second chance is important in the space of innovation.