Sciology

AlwaysOn Stanford Summit 2010 Roundup

I am so excited to write this blog as this is very very dear to me. I just finished attending the AlwaysOn 2010 Stanford Summit at Stanford, CA. It started on 27th evening and ended today 29th July. Two and half day of non-stop industry experts discussions and insights have filled my brain. This is the first time i am at Stanford Summit and i am very fortunate to be able to attend this one. I met with variety of industry experts from Green Fuels – Mobile Software – Monetization – SaaS – Cloud to Music Media.  On the other side i got introduced to so many insights like Angel Investors,  Seed Funding, Venture Capitalists, IPO, Exits, Secondary Markets and others.

As i cant reproduce everything i have in my brain, i am planning to dump some % of information from my brain. Following is a short overview of take home.

Hottest Industries in the coming years for Entrepreneurs:

• Mobile
• Enterprise
• Internet Consumer
• Online Education
• Video
• Data Analytics

Some notes from the Panel

• Angel investors risk their own money while VCs loose other people’s money
• It’s easier and cheaper to get into the markets. But its takes the same amount of years to get to an IPO. i.e. the industry standard 10.4 years.
• If you want to change the world and need a team of advisers then take the VC way. They give you more money and team.
• Matt Grod of the Qualcomm demoed a great technology advancement with the augmented reality experience. Qualcomm also invested heavily into the nano chip technology that goes into the major mobile phones.
• Mobile Ads and Virtual Gifts seems to be very much used in the teenager segment. I never thought this is profitable segment and Mi$ business.
• There is predominantly only two dominating players in the Mobiles OS feilds… iOS and Android. Others like WinMo, Symbian and RIM are close to nothing. Now the question is where is WebOS going ? How will it compete with the other dominant players ? What devices will it run on ?
• There are some who would say that the Cloud infrastructure is less secure than Windows 3
• It is the time for more Angel and Seed investors. There is definitely lot of money for the great ideas.
• Looks like,  during the interview process Paul Percell says, “If you turn out to be an asshole, then i will fire you”. The effect is if it is a medeocre, then he will not tur back to you. If he is a good guy, he will accept the challenge and join your team.
• I loved what Prof. Robert Sutton said about good boss, “The good Boss protects their people from harm, intrusions, distractions, idiots and idiocy of every stripe”.
• Without knowing if the employees are self motivated and accountable, the “flattening” of hierarchy in a company is disastrous.
• CEO’s leadership has huge effect on the other C-Level execs and BODs. While, the middle managers has huge leadership responsibility as 80% of the company employees interact with these middle managers. So, company vision, goals and must be constantly updated to middle managers and should sink to employees.
• Also, employees negative emotions, laziness, stupidity are remarkably destructive and contagious. In short, Bad is stronger than good.
• Innovators will prevail even if they come late in the game. e.g. Facebook beats Yahoo in Jan 2010 in # of unique visitors.
• Creation of more and more gadgets and making people slaves to gadgets will shut the creative brain. This is similar to what happened when Industrialization started.
• Jaron believes that the future will be with full of the VR devices and Internet should reward people who shares good content.

Following are some interesting slides that i captured. Hope it makes sense for you. Have fun!

Stanford_AlwaysOn_Summit_2010

A person is much more than what we see and feel

In the recent days, many incidents have been reported where either wife kills Husband or Husband (or others) kills (or tortures) Wife and all the other combinations of relationships. In most of the incidents, neighbors and friends are surprised about the fact that “this” person could not have don’t that. Or the person whom we know could not do this “bad” thing. In other times, some parents are heart broken to say that, “We never thought our son-in-law could torture our daughter. He seemed to be nice.”. Readers can very well get the context in which one would be surprised to see what other person did to them or others.

The recent Tiger Woods story is flying around the media for a few months now. Tiger Woods is an American professional golfer whose achievements to date rank him among the most successful golfers of all time. Currently the World No. 1, he was the highest-paid professional athlete in 2008, having earned an estimated $110 million from winnings and endorsements. Woods has won 14 professional major golf championships, the second highest of any male player, and 71 PGA Tour events, third all time. With the recent setback on his career where he was exposed with a Sex scandal with his wife and (many more) mistress. Millions of people worldwide were devastated that their favorite “Tiger Woods” was exposed to the media. They are never to believe that Tiger Woods could do such “bad” things. All the earnest he earned with hard work of few years was lost in few days.

SPS Rathore and Ruchika case is also one of the most popular and saddening news in 2009. SPS Rathore is the Inspector General of police who was the top law enforcer of the state of Haryana. Ruchika was a budding tennis player. The 14-year-girl was so traumatized by the experience and intimidation from authorities to silence her that she committed suicide in 1993. Probably this is not the right forum to discuss, if the 6 month jail and Rs.1000/- fine is what one should get for this inexcusable mistake. However, people were shocked to see that a IPS officer and an ex-DGP could do such a “bad” thing to a little girl (same age as his grand-daughter may be).

Mohammad Azharuddin and Ajay Jadeja were two cricket icons who many many Indians and other cricket fans adored and respected. In the year 2000, when  all these cricketers were hit by the Match-fixing scandal, many where angry and surprised how these seasoned cricketers are able to do such stupid actions.

The Monica Lewinsky scandal was a political sex scandal emerging from a sexual relationship between United States President Bill Clinton and a 22-year-old White House intern, Monica Lewinsky. The news of this extra-marital affair and the resulting investigation eventually led to the impeachment of President Clinton in 1998 by the U.S. House of Representatives and his subsequent acquittal on all impeachment charges (of perjury and obstruction of justice) in a 21-day Senate trial. President of a lead nation falling pray to such practices made the entire US and world look at this guy with shame. He is one president who has great charm, had influenced many nations on nuclear treaties, strengthened relations with India and many more. A person of such magnitude was/is never expected to commit a mistake which would play with people’s feelings.

Bollywood’s hero Salman Khan is/was respected and adored by many Indians and people abroad. On 28 September 2002, Salman was arrested for rash and negligent driving. His car had run into a bakery in Mumbai; one person who was sleeping on the pavement outside the bakery died and three others were injured in the mishap. On 17 February 2006, Khan was sentenced to one year in prison for hunting an endangered species, the Chinkara. The sentence was stayed by a higher court during appeal. His turbulent relationship with actress Aishwarya Rai was a well publicized topic in the Indian media, and had constantly filled gossip columns. After their break-up in March 2002, Rai accused him of harassing her.

• Childhood
  • Parents treatment
  • Teachers treatment
  • Neighbors treatment
  • Relatives treatment
  • Friends Influence
  • Learning from Hobbies
• Adulthood
  • College Environment
  • Friend Influence
  • Delta of Parent Influence
  • Delta of Faculty Influence
  • Learning from Hobbies
  • Learning from Travel
  • Experiences @ Work
  • Learning from Boss
  • Leanings from Co-worker

Also, it is very important to understand that a person plays multiple roles in his life time. And Responsibility for each role is UNIQUE.

A person is a combination of his upbringing stimulants.

A person is a combination of experiences from his birth time till death.

A person is a combination of positives traits

A person is a combination of negative traits

Very often, people don’t understand this fact and mix up the facts and assume the following…

• He is a good Son. So, He will be good Husband.
• She is a good Daughter; So, She will be good Mother.
• She is a good Daughter; So, She will be good Wife.
• He is a great Person at Work; So, He will become good Husband.
• He talks very nicely with people; So, He will LOVE his wife.
• She is a nice person; So, She should be loving her Husband.
• He has done his Ph.D; He will take care of his Wife and Kids nicely.
• He is nice person to talk to; He may be loving his family a lot.
• He takes care of his Wife; He he must be taking care of his Parents too.
• She talks nicely with her In-laws. She much be taking good care of them.
• and many more you could think of…

Paper based advertisement and promotions in mail

This is a small effort to make people realize how much of paper we waste in the name of Advertisement and Promotions in USA. Here is what i did — On On June 8th i decided that i will watch closely on all the mail i get by post. Most of the mail goes in the trash bin anyway. The idea of this experiment is to collect *ALL* mail i get between June 10th 2010 to July 9th 2010. I sorted all the mail and separated the junk and what i really look for. Following is the outcome.

Please see this video before you read on… Paper Garbage from Mail.

Some Statistics

Total Weight of the Mails (which correlates to paper weight that goes into junk) : 5.2 lbs (2.35 kgs)

Promotions & Ads addressed to Me : 21 mails

Promotions & Ads addressed to Previous Residents : 9 mails

Coupons addressed to Current Resident : 12 mails

Note 1: I have ALL my bank accounts, credit cards, utilities, mobile, cable bills as “paperless“.

Note 2 : Above mails are the ones that i personally never subscribed or wanted.

Whats does it mean

I can say that i get the least amount of mail and i still get 5 lbs of mail per months that i put into the trash. Lets do a simple math here. According to the latest Google public data the US population is 307,006,550 (307 million) as of July 2009.

Amount of Paper junk that comes by mail in 1 month = 307/4 mi X 5.2 lbs  = 399 million lbs

Amount of Paper junk that comes by mail in 1 year = 307/4 mi X 5.2 lbs X 12 months = 4788 million lbs = 4.7 billion lbs of paper

I am sure the above math is very (very) conservative as there may be s one who totally depend on the paper based billing and others.

Is there a way to reduce this paper waste  + printing chemicals + recycle costs + indirect costs and which yields NOTHING productive ?

Updated 13th July 7.00 pm PST : One of the reader pointed out that the multiplication factor is not 300 million people as these mails are per house hold. I agree! Taking that in to consideration, the new numbers would simply be 1/4 of original.

Again, these numbers are DEFINITELY not accurate. They only demonstrate the enormous paper waste.  So, i would suggest readers to be aware of the fact that these numbers are not based out of scientific formula . Thanks for your understanding.

I can see it coming…

As i wrote in my previous entry that i will be starting the part-time MBA from this September from UC Davis Bay Area campus. By now, i am already seeing most of the challenges that i would be facing. It’s definitely going to the time crunch and mostly it deals with the time management. 24 hours seems to be too less to do want i am doing now. All the time divided among the following categories.

• Work
• Family (spouse and kids)
• Parents
• Siblings
• Friends
• Neighbors
• Vacation
• Blogging
• Photography
• My non-profit

….and… I am already getting anxious. In the past week my daughter has been with high fever and teething pain and we are spending most of the time with my daughter diverting her and pacifying her pain. I really want to be able to do “same thing” (at least i want to dream to do it) even after my classes start in September. The biggest challenge of all the things is to be able to justify the time at Office, Home and School. All the three are very important and crucial to want we want to be as a person.

I want to get the maximum gain out of my MBA at this time. Let us see what i say in the next 4 months. I reserve the blog title… “I am seeing it now…” to talk about my experiences of MBA in November 2010

Top 5 reasons to use Eclipse

A group of Eclipse enthusiasts along with few Indian University students discussed on “Why many use Eclipse ? “. Here are the TOP 5 reasons. Due to lack of time, i am making this blog very short.

• Easy to Use : As a user/developer/tool developer/customer, we find it easy to use. The fact that MANY adopted Eclipse and they love it says that Eclipse has “something” that others don’t.
• Platform : Eclipse is designed and coded for stability and re usability. They exactly know the problems tools developers would face (or are facing). It has stable APIs that works and anyone can reuse MOST of what Eclipse uses. Eclipse provides the building blocs with a strong foundation that others can build on. A Real Platform.
• Community : The fact that Eclipse made a complete successful Eco system of consumers and producers of the Eclipse Plugins and various other technologies makes it interdependent and trustworthy. We observe a lot of integrity and timely help among the community members.
• Documentation and Examples : Developers, Customers and others… who wants to try something using Eclipse needs an entry point. Something they can start with and “feel good”. This entry point could be documentation or examples or code snippets. We need something that you can refer to and it takes you few steps ahead in solving your problem.
• Free and Open Source : Well, these things do matter now and Free helps you to easily access something. Free, lets you try out and not regret about the decision. If you like it, continue… else throw it in recycle bin. Open Source helps us to feel confident, explore new areas by extending the functionality, independence from the vendor,  etc… If something worse or annoying happens, you can fix it yourself.

To conclude, Eclipse just works. Human brain works with some assumptions and pre-conditions to achieve a task. It is good feeling for any human being to ” get what you expect” and “when it happens exactly how you imagined”. That’s what Eclipse did. Can’ wait to test drive Helios.

Other references…

• Top 10 reasons to use eclipse…

• Eclipse as a Platform

• Announcing : Bay Area Eclipse Regional Community

USA or India and When should you move back home ?

These are some factors that many consider to move back to India from USA. These slides contain summary of all the points that me and my friends and relatives discussed over this topic in the past 2.5 years.

Why Calcium for your body?

A real quick reference of why you need calcium ?

You need Calcium because…

• It maintains normal heart beat
• regulates blood pressure
• helps nervous system function correctly
• MAY reduce colon cancer chances
• … its not only about the stronger bones…

Calcium rich foods…

• low-fat milk
• butter milk
• regular yogurt
• tofu
• other misc items like milk-shakes, coffee drinks, etc…

Calcium requirement / day…

• elementary through high school kids – 1300mg X 4 servings
• adult and middle aged – 1000mg X 3 servings
• older people after 50 – 1200mg X 4 servings

Exercises that helps you…

• walking
• jogging
• dancing
• tennis
• yoga

In between…. Why Vitamin D ?

• helps your body to absorb Calcium
• prevents rickets (soft bones)
• sunlight triggers to produce more Vitamin D

Tip 2 [Ecl2JDev] – Discover External Tools

A very useful feature in Eclipse is the ability to configure external tools. This enables us to configure ant scripts and others tools which otherwise are not part of the development environment.

The real value is the ability to use java, jvm, work space settings and run the external tool with in Eclipse.

A similar feature in JDeveloper is “External Tools…”. You should be able to navigate to this option from “Tools -> External Tools…”

JDeveloper integrates the external tools like Directory Explorer, Notepad, Internet Explorer and Word.

In this example you will add a simple ant script and run it form JDeveloper. Click “New…” from the External Tools dialog.

Select Apache Ant and click “Next >” . Yeah… i never jumped from Step 1 to Step 3…somehow it is that way!

Select the ant targets from the list.

Click “Next >” and in the next steps you can select ant properties, ant version, java version, java arguments, working directory and any additional class path entries. I am going to deliberately skip the steps from 5 to 8 and you can always experiment with them. Step 9 allows you to enter the Caption for the Menu Item and Tooltip text.

You can selectively add the Command to Tools Menu, Navigator Context and Main Toolbar, etc…

The final step is a very interesting part where you can specify when this command is available. e.g. you could choose the build is available only when java file is selected.

Once the configuration is finished the newly created “Deploy HelloWorld” is added to the external tools.

You can now launch the “Deploy HelloWorld” from toolbar.

The HelloWorld ant script is successfully executed and finished.

In summary, you can take the full advantage of the “External Tools” and configure any external tools.

What is a workout ?

Thanks to Shrenik Jain who forwarded me this nice write up. Yes, indeed it the matter of time, effort, self-control against all the work and family pressure that keeps one go for a workout!

So for all those who have been procrastinating the workout, please follow it NOW!

Tip 1 [Ecl2JDev] – Play with Application Navigator

With my previous post (Top 10 JDeveloper Shortcuts), i started my blogging series on JDeveloper. Being worked on Eclipse for a long time makes me look for similar features in JDeveloper. In the process of understanding/discovering JDeveloper and Extensions, i am finding many interesting things to share. From now on, i am starting the “Tip X [Ecl2JDev]” series where i mention tips to work with JDeveloper. I hope this helps the community out there who is adopting JDeveloper and are in same phase as i am.

I will keep these tips crisp and small, so its easy to follow.

For a typical Java/JEE project it is common to work with the “Package Explorer” and “Navigator” views. Package Explorer shows the relevant content for an application developer and the Navigator reflects the folder structure on the disk.

JDeveloper has the “Navigator Display Options” in the Applications Navigator’s toolbar menu. You should play with display options to view the content in more meaningful way for you.

There are many combinations that one can work with and choose which ever view you like.