Lest We Forget ...

There is a conflagration up in Jammu and Kashmir ... there was a news piece about the commemoration of the first anniversary of the siege of Lal Masjid. The siege had resulted in armed clashes between security forces, and gunmen operating from the Mosque.

Raises a question ... a disturbing one. Is this the direction humanity is condemned to walk in? Is this what we shall have as our future? As the world and life we give to our children? It is true ... public memory is short ... Its been 60 years ... more than lifetimes in public memory? True ... in large part, we see the event through the mists of time. But, something we need to remember ... It was worth millions of human lives ... worth uncountable drops of blood, and tears.

They called it Partition. And, maybe no other generation can feel the pain of the partition, as much as the children of midnight, the people who lived through it, losing their all ... that was perhaps a political necessity ... and losing scores of their loved ones. The scariest part ... it was not some distant armed force which caused this ... that it was ones own people, their friends, neighbours, people they met on a daily basis, the flower vendor, the ice-candy man, who wreaked this havoc. Maybe this is a lesson we should never forget. So we are, at least, not condemned to repeat some of the greatest follies of humanity. Please see these pictures! They tell the entire story of Partition ... in a way no words can.

Interesting Idea ...

I guess its true ... Every alternate day, there is an interesting idea which is taking shape in the world ... especially on the web. I came across one such idea the other day ... but first, the way i came across this idea is actually as interesting as the idea itself.

I was indulging in some self-awareness ... i have a visitor map on my blog. You can click on this to enlarge the map. I did that the other day, in order to see the visitor map of my blog in more detail. No, this is not what it is. There was a banner of a website on here, which caught the eye ... and, i must say its quite an interesting idea ... Its idopia ... and an interesting idea, i must say.

What can you do here? Not much ... Actually, i am also just exploring this. Off the cuff, what you can do is, ask a question, and post it ... and, people can respond to the question. Not quite a discussion forum, though. Its more of a polling tool. Any question you have in mind, you can ask, and people can support, or oppose the idea. You can also post details about the question you are asking, enabling people to understand what you are asking in detail, before they respond.

In addition, you can also get an overall picture of the kinds of questions people are asking, what are the responses people are posting to them, and also, which are the most active topics which are garnering the most interest.

What is most interesting is the way this could be utilized in the organization. Couple of scenarios come to mind ... Would people prefer e-learning to in-class training for a particular topic? Or, do people like the new compensation plan for salespeople? As a standalone tool, though, this might have limited utility, but used in the larger context of social computing tools, this could be quite an interesting tool. A blog, say, could have a reference to questions related to the topic on the blog, as a quick reference to readers, or members of a network could use this tool to find out what people think about a particular topic. Seems interesting, and i possibly, people could find more innovative ways to use this, than any one of us can think of?

Book In My Head

They say each one of us has a writer somewhere within. I guess that is quite true. Considering the thoughts in my head these days ... There are so many thoughts which course through the neurons merrilly gettng those synapses tingling. In fact, i would say there is not one, but many books which the writer inside is raring to write. There is just one small, tiny, itsy-bitsy problem ... Actually, not one, but two. First, what to write about, and second, where to begin.

There are so many topics i would like to write about. I want to write about some things which have happened during my time this time round on the earth ... some incidents from childhood, some illustrious craziness in college, some of the memorable journeys (yes, this could be a magnum opus), which i have undertaken. I also want to write about my spiritual explorations. And, i want to write about two topics which are very, very close to my heart ... maybe one not as much as the other ... the Partition (well, my family comes from Lahore), and the Silk Road. The political, and more important, the cultural and, of course, culinary history of the wonderful cities which dotted the silk road, and the empires which were created, and which faded away in time. I also want to write about some of the moments engraved in the mind's eye till the time i depart (maybe in the worlds to come, as well ...). I want to write about love, and about human frailty, and heroism.

OK ... I am sure you got the point. There are so many things to write about. First question ...

Should all of these form part of one story, as they are, in my mind, threads tied to each other, with ends chasing each other, or should they be put to paper, in a form where each thread can be told in the form of a separate story?

Once you have understood the dilemma i am facing, i am sure you would understand the second question ... where do i begin?

All thoughts, opinions, suggestions, more than welcome ... Please pass this on to your friends, and do write back on the comments, with your thoughts! Would be highly appreciated ...

Construction ...

Just a thought ... There is the construction boom. If you have been to Gurgaon, you would see the amount of new construction activity which is happening here. This is a very nice sign. It is a sure indicator of the growth of the city, and reflects on the amount of value that is being generated. This is a wonderful thing. Only concern i see here ... Why are we not having higher and higher buildings being constructed?

I am not just talking about Gurgaon here, but in all parts of the country. What is happening is that we are constructing buildings which are short. As a result, more and more land has to be brought under construction, in order to accommodate the same set of people, or to build the same number of housing units, or the same number of office blocks. While this by itself may not be an issue, this has the potential of snowballing into a situation where more and more of agricultural land is taken up for construction purposes. This is already happening in parts of the country, from what i understand from my interactions with people from different parts of the country, and this is not a nice thing to be happening, considering that if we keep going this way, we would end up having major food shortfall in the coming years.

All comments invited ...

Something To Read ...

This is going to be nothing in particular, and everything in general, hence the title. The first thing ... Driving! If you have driven in Kolkata, or Mumbai, you would know how much of a nightmare it can be. Well, Gurgaon is well on its way to becoming a world city, and hence ... Can Gurgaon be far behind? Just today ... there was a lady, driving a SUV ... no, i have no problems with that. Never ... wouldnt even think about it. Just that she was driving while having an Apple, and trying to call up someone on her mobile. Now, this surely is a juggling act highly difficult to emulate, and i would hope not many folks try to do that, either. At least, not the eating ... its always much more wonderful eating in peace, dont you think? Now, this is not to say that this is the preserve of women, but being the MCP that i am (ya, ya, i heard you say this earlier ...), i just had to write this! No, no ... i dont hate women. In fact, much the opposite ... i love them! Tongue in cheek ... its just their driving skills i am worried about.

On the subject of women in Gurgaon ... i think Gurgaon is growing up, and quick. The other day, i was out buying Beer (yes, this was before my Diet, for the record ...). Two girls came in (i would call them girls, given the grey hair in my goatee, and the fact that they looked much, much younger) ... They asked for strong Beer. Now, thats cool ... Girls can drink anything they want to ... What i would like to write about here is that the shopkeeper didnt bat an eyelid. The usual glances, head to toe, sizing them up ... they were just not there! And, this, to my mind, is a sign of a city which is growing up, if not already there!

Training Scenario ... Possibility?

Carrying on from the previous post, i am trying to build up a training scenario which leverages the emerging un-book concept, and social computing. First question ... why? This question gets more or less answered in the last post i have written. Instead of a static handout (even more of an issue if you are doing technology training), the training material could be something which could offer the following benefits:

1. The training material is up-to-date. As people contribute to blogs and wikis (which could be maintained by a training organization, though preferably not!), there is content which is getting generated every day. This means that the latest thought processes on the topic are incorporated into the content.

2. The training material reflects all opinions. Usually, training material is written by one or two people, and reflects the ideas, thoughts, and opinions of these people. This is one of the things which restricts learning to only the specific things which are covered in the training material. Whereas with the un-book concept, the blogs and wikis students could refer to, are actually representative of a large cross-section of viewpoints.

The scenario could work out something like this ...

When a student enrolls for a training program, the training team could email them a set of intro blogs. Links to these blogs, along with their ratings, and comments from previous students could be maintained as part of a wiki page, which could serve as an aggregator for contents on a particular topic, and could be maintained by the training team itself. The training team could also recommend the students to read the "Intro blogs" (these could be blogs which are classified based on user or training team tagging, as being introductory in nature). These recommendations could also come from the faculty who is conducting the training. This ensures that some amount of background resources are available to students before they come to the training.

During the training, there could be a set of blogs, "Training Material" (which represent the thoughts of a number of folks on the topic being taught), though in the interest of brevity, the list of blogs could be pre-selected by the faculty, or identified by the training team. I would recommend this, otherwise, a plethora of resources being available would only tend to confuse students.

What is most important (and this is an issue which most training organizations face), is that these resources are available to students even once they are through with the training, and back to their day-to-day jobs. This would enable the training team to provide resources to students which would enable them to engage with the topic taught in the training, even post-training. And, maybe ... just maybe ... one or two of the students from each batch might start writing their own blog on the topic, and this would only add to the resources which are available to subsequent resources.

I have tried to create a rough model of how the training organization could leverage social computing to deliver training in the organizational context. This might not work too well outside the organizational context (havent thought this through, to be honest), but could be worth a thought, at least?

So Who Is It?

There is a front page piece in the ToI today ... Blame $146 oil on speculators, US House told ... Interesting reading. Apparently, the expert has told the US House that the surge in oil prices is due to speculative activity. Interesting ... On the other hand, there was an article in the Financial Express, which says, Majors say high oil pricess not due to speculators. Even more interesting ... CNBC says ...

Crude prices have surged seven-fold since the start of 2002 as supply struggles to keep up with demand from emerging nations like China. The price spike has caused fuel protests worldwide and hurt demand in consuming nations like the United States.

Interesting ... China and India (though the article doesnt explicitly mention India), are to blame, according to this statement. On the other hand, the United States is seen as a consuming nation. Is China, or India, not a consuming nation? This gives the impression that according to CNBC, China should be "sacrificing" for the "consuming nation", the United States. If anything, this should be a clarion call for the "developed" world to look inwards, and understand why they are consuming hydrocarbons (or anything else for that matter), in disproportionate measure. And, shoulder the responsibility of the implications of relentless consumption. Queer ... Very queer!

Dynamic Books ...

A book is a static entity ... it is frozen in time the moment it is published, just like any other document. Which is why i believe that in an organization, as far as the KM program goes, collaboration has to play an increasingly important role than codification. Because no matter how exhaustive a document repository is, the codification of knowledge the repository represents will keep on changing. And this is where i look at blogs, wikis, and communities to keep in synch with this changing knowledge knowledge base, as well as to make sure that it keeps changing, because our knowledge will increase, and evolve only as this happens.

Jay Cross writes about the benefits of the evolving concept of the Un-Book. One thing a lot of people believe is that a wiki, for example, is Work in Progress, while a book represents the final word. This is something we as a civilization need to understand ... there is no such thing as a final word on human knowledge. This is because human knowledge has not yet reached the final frontier (whether it ever will is the question of another debate, given that we dont even know whether is such a thing or not).

Interestingly, if the book is slowly becoming obsolete (not to mention prohibitively expensive), then what is the form of interaction which could generate opinions and thoughts at a level which is at least similar to that of a book. Much as an un-book sounds exciting, it lacks a basic structure which a book can offer. Now, it could be argued that structure is not a nice thing. While that is a viewpoint, i believe that a certain amount of structure (at least a minimal level), is required to aid learning. Now, agreed that different people find different kinds of structures beneficial to their learning process, but structure there must be, to some extent or the other. For example, visit a page on wikipedia, and you would find some rudimentary structure in place.

What would be really neat is a spiral bound collection of dynamic things, like blogs and wikis, which could be presented as an ongoing book. The important part being ongoing, considering that learning is not going to stop is folks stop writing blogs. Blogroll comes to mind with this. Interesting ... it serves as a collection of blogs i could refer to. Thing about blogrolls is that they are one person's viewpoint on the best sources of information and opinions on a particular topic. Could get tricky if you are talking about marketing blogs.

What could be cool could be some kind of a blogroll directory. A collection of the favourite blogs of a number of people on a particular topic, something on the lines of del.icio.us or digg. What would make this more interesting if this could also present cross-referencing of blogs, so that there could emerge a rating mechanism, to give an idea of who are the people who prefer a particular set of "spiral bound" blogs. What could make this even more interesting ... Having a minimal structure. Somewhat like having a blogroll which has sections ... Introduction to Topic blogs, Basic Concepts blogs, Detailed Concepts blog, Implementation blogs, etc. etc. Somewhat like having a book with a Preface which is dynamic, and to which people can add to as they keep learning new things?

Of Social Networking, and Questions ...

Interesting post by Andrew McAfee ... Some Questions You Might Get Asked ... Somewhat like a cheat sheet of some of the top of mind questions you get asked whenever you are trying to sell the idea of social networking. And, Andrew seems to have covered most, if not all.

The interesting thing is that most of these questions are not as novel as they would be made out to be. The argument i would have, to answer quite a few of these questions is that a lot of the questions raised relate to things already happening ... these are part of human nature, not the exclusive domain of social computing. And some of the questions raised have been around for some time, and would be around, social networking withstanding.

This brings me to the point of social networking ... The only thing social networking tools are allowing people to do is to create relationships, which can be leveraged for work, and pleasure. Now, i wouldnt deny that there would be a fun aspect to social networking, even behind the firewall. But, this is simply because we are all human beings. How many times have you been to a meeting where the discussion was totally centred around work, and not a word about anything besides work? (If you can actually think of times, please assume this question to be rhetorical, and take some time to smell the flowers ...). Point is, "time wasting" is not so much that. Its more of a way to create human relationships, rather than simply relationships which can be expressed in the forma of mathematical equations (i am actually reading a book on this these days!).

As for time wasting (read posting photos of vacation), every organization has the system of setting performance targets, and appraising performance against these. I would expect this process to address time-wasting! And, i am sure managers love to give stretch targets to their reportees, which means that folks out there have less and less time to actually do anything apart from work (sometimes they actually forget to breathe?). In fact, this runs counter to the argument which i have heard a lot of times, which goes something like this ... nobody in my team has time for social computing, because they are already piled up with so much work (check it out here).

Larger concern is the possibility of information leakage. Its not to say that leakage doesnt happen now, but its just that social computing tools could act as a catalyst. Which is where, when within the firewall, there might be the requirement to build some amount of walls around content which is considered sensitive (and please dont treat your annual report as being sensitive, especially when its already been released to the markets!). The point i am trying to make is, there is the temptation to mark everything as sensitive. There must be mechanisms to address this, otherwise nobody gets to access anything. In other words, there is the possibility of falling into the silo thought process, which should be avoided (Chinese walls to be avoided?).

Runaway Prices, and Sound-Bites ...

They are kicking up a political storm. And, everyone is left wondering what hit them. I am reading so much about fuel prices, and combine this with the uncertainty around the 123 Agreement, that it seems almost as though the foundations of modern democracy are being shaken. Of course, one of the things anyone would be Hoping for would be restoration of the normal way the world goes round.

However, not many of the soundbites are pointing to this direction, as more and more of the high and mighty folks are busy pointing fingers and allocating blame for this situation, rather than trying to sit together and find a solution which is beneficial to the entire world. Sound bites which are coming through dont sound too encouraging, either ...

There is an article in the Times of India titled OPEC Chief Rules Out Return of Price Band. Interesting reading. According to this, the CEO of Royal Dutch Shell believes its hard to prove that the financial markets have anything to do with the price rise. While that may be, common sense ... There hasnt been any drastic change in either demand or supply side, so why such drastic changes in prices? Basic economics would suggest no such reason should exist. More interesting is the CEO of BP saying ...

Speculators believe in the fundamentals... the era of cheap oil is over as expanding economies like China and India are boosting demand.

Interesting ... I just did some back of the envelope calculations ... based on information presented in two sites ... Consumption data from NationMaster and indexmundi, and population data from wikipedia paints a picture quite different. Of course, these are all back of the envelope calculations, and dont represent exact figures, but the point is, that the per capita consumption of India and China is 10% of the American figure. Also, if we look at total consumption numbers, there is a difference of a magnitude of 10 between the two numbers. About time someone looked at the entire picture rationally?