Pre-occupation with work off course, doing the new company website, shaping up products, hiring people for technical/non-technical roles, balancing some new initiatives…(right from starting them to get them running in a cycle takes time), and catching up with some sleep in between all these.

ahh..i think reasons are good enough to keep me away from all the social media cloud. but still it feels good to type something here today and will keep doing it from now…

btw…whenever i write anything…i keep wondering - is anyone listening or am i talking to myself???

The whole idea is about ’sharing the space on wedding invite cards to advertise’. Though idea seems innovative but i still have my doubts on its acceptability….(well who’s gonna take such risk that too with his wedding card)….but they are not ME…

so as One of the bright minds at TeamLease came up with idea of placing the recruitment ads on wedding invites so as to reach mass audience…..they agreed to do a pilot and luckily got someone who was getting married and was ready to experiment with his invite card. so his card looked something like this:

in lieu of this the company sponsored the invite card expenses and as mint reports..the experiment was pretty successful as it sounded to be….TeamLease got 40+ inquiries out of which 20+ people actually got placed.

So this what i call WIN-WIN-WIN situation…

Advertising company: happy- they got business

Wedding parties: Happy - invitation expenses FREE

Guests: Happy - Good fun..Good Food…Good Job !!

So Planning to get married…Contact TeamLease…Details in the pic above !!

wanted to write down the excerpts from the discussion but first i was really engrossed in listenening to all of them and then not much time was left for me to do that….i heard a lot ideas coming out from the mouths of web 2.0 veterans themselves…so do lemme know if any of them lights up something in your brain too…who knows maybe next we are the part of the panelists..(ahh..ohh god that was reall good to dreamm )

BarCamp - A long awaited event is here in Delhi again. I can describe it as - “A place where you can find techies, geeks, startup guys, entrepreneurs, VCs, bloggers..etc all under one roof with a common goal of ’sharing’ ”

I always find these events really amusing with a lot of enthusiasts around, oozing out alot of positive energies, full of ideas and a belief to convert them to reality. The excitement comes from the kind of open forum these events provide to all to present their ideas, products or just to share their knowledge with others. Best place to get your idea/product/business or technology reviewed by a lot of brains.

Who Should Attend?

If you are startup entrepreneur, Investor, techie or any one who has an appetite for technology, is a web and mobile enthusiast and love to network with the people carrying all those geeky things in their heads…you’re welcome !!

How to register?

For that you need to add your name in ‘Campers’ at BarCamp Wiki. There are opportunities open to ‘volunteer‘ , ‘Present/Deliver a talk‘ or even ‘Sponsor‘ , so add you name in appropriate section there.

Venue : still not decided…will be updated soon !!

Looking forward to see you at the camp !!

_______________________________________

Update : Venue for the event announced !!

Impetus Technologies
D-39/40, Sector - 59
Noida

Date: 8th December, 2007

Time: 9:30 AM - 5:30 Pm

1. Why DesiMartini??

2. Why $10 Million for that anyway??

i got to know about DesiMartini.com after meeting vivek pahwa at some conference and believe me after looking at the homepage i dint’ even feel like registering at the first place ( credit goes to its design) and started wondering who all are registering here and why (i am still wondering )…c’mon we already have facebook, orkut and they serve the purpose.

but as the news says desimartini is boasting of a decent user base of 2.5 lakh people with more than 2.5 million page views a month. good if its true but still i dont see these social networks going anywhere without adding any value to the concept. For HT i dont know how good this deal was (hope they know) but big congrats to vivek and his team. !!

Now i can understand why MingleBox.com received a funding of $7 Million or bigadda.com flowing mindless money on boom advertising or MIH funding ibibo.com but all in all as a web 2.0 entrepreneur the whole idea of creating another social network doesn’t excite me at all…ahh…but when i think about creating ‘close-to’ $10 million this seems the easiest path..what say Nikhil ??

1. Job security in an established company.

2. Financial security (the kind of money you can get)

3. A better name associated with you in your career record.

4. Facilities, benefits..n blah blah n blahhh…

(i call this “List 1” so as to refer back easily.)

but the ones who have ever given it a thought, (both to work for a startup or start one themselves) ask them n they will tell you, its a Daring step…why..??…i tell you:

A Startup is where following things will never happen :-

nobody will ask you about your

a) Qualification

b) your lineup of degrees

c) your academic credentials

(lets say if they ask you…remember they dont bother much if its good or bad…bothways)

Reasons??

1. Skills are more important than theoretical knowledge

2. if knowledge is important then it better be practical

3. degrees ‘only’ don’t gaurantee points 1 & 2.

They (startup guys) won’t try to vow you with a fancy pay package or a cushy job, on the contrary they will be trying to vow you with the large amount of work you’ll be responsible for and at the same time expecting that you(prospective employee) are fascinated by it .

Because YOU will be the one responsible to create the elements of LIST1 (kindly refer back) ‘for you‘ and ‘for everyone else‘ in your team. Progress of any group/organization/team/company depends on its members/employees but when it comes to a startup it becomes more crucial as there are less resources to fall back.

But why work for a StartUp??

i can go on listing like 100 points on this one !! lets see few strong ones:

1. Freedom of doing your own things.

2. Freedom of creating-the-things as you think.

3. You tend to create new ways of doing things… instead ‘always’ following the old ones.

(if above points sound like a fancy kiddish perspective, have a look at some serious ones)

4. The kind of Exposure you get is valuable - as no where you will find departments restricting you of exploring a field which might interest you.

5. Better learning curve - as you will be doing the tasks which in bigger companies you’ll find to be divided amongst many people leaving you with a small part of it . so here that is what makes it challenging to work, if you think then in some way startup demand you to work as a one man army.

6. better appreciation, recognition for your effort.

7. Faster execution of ideas.

8. Open forum where everyone has his say.

9. Environment is cool, less rigid in terms of rules, or what we call a ‘Startup Culture’.

So is everyone welcome??

No, Beware of the bad aspects of the points listed above if you’re not:

• Self-Motivated
• Highly committed to your work/goal
• having thirst to learn
• work-o-hlic

and these are what i call prerequisites to even think about working for a startup or starting one yourselves.

Personally, in my early engineering days i always had this idea of starting something myself and i was sure that if in case am not able to do so then i am going to work with a startup company and that is what i used to advice my friends also ( for what i used to get mass rejection though ) . its not that i have any apprehension working with a bigger company, rather the whole idea revolves around the “enterprising attitude” which demands your space to perform, which generally is not found in bigger organizations when you start as a fresher.

but if you have that opportunity of working with an established organization and having your space to innovate and create something new or better…do grab it…that is what “Intrapreneurship” is all about…around which my next post will be revolving.

although up till now the implementation of thin clients is really thin and only big organizations (Read: Who can spend more money) are implementing it but i cannot stop myself from “not calling” it thin-client technology but a Startup Technology. why?? Read on…

So What is Thin-client Technology by the way??

To keep it simple, its basically a Client-server architecture with a difference. Here all the Processing power(Processors), Memory(RAM), Storage(HDD), Peripherals (CD-ROMs ,FDD ,DVD Drive, Printers..etc) are vested with the Central Server and the Client node is a minimal machine with maybe an Obsolete processor, small RAM and no storage, or it can be summed up as a Monitor, Keyboard, Mouse and a Thin-client station. Client drives all its processing, memory and storage requirements from the server.

Talking about the cost cutting features of it….you can now guess all this:

• No primary storage (hard-disks, CDROMs, floppies) required on thin clients. Memory requirement is minimal
• Much more uptime and performance enhancement as no dependence on individual machines
  
• Can use an obsolete PC with few modifications and Thin client software.
• All user, network, resource and application management can be done on the central server. This not only reduces unnecessary system
  administration but also allows for better control over your organizations computing environment and user and access control.
• All applications like MS Office, Internet and e-mail applications, Oracle, SQL, IDEs for different languages and even ERPs and CRMs can be run from the thin client.
• Resources available on the network like CDROMs, FDDs, HDDs, printers, etc can be shared among users
• As all the data is kept on the server, only the server’s hard disks need to be protected and Backed up.
  
• Zero downtime for clients since all the data is available centrally
• UPS is required only on the server side. Even in the case of a power failure no data corruption or data loss can take place on the thin client node as all computing virtually happens on the serve. (this makes a huge difference in the cost per machine )
  
• Hardware and software need to be upgraded only on the server side.

In my opinion with BPOs already adopting it, BFSI sector do have a great requirement for it as security of data and time critical maintainance in concerned.

but here i will again say, this one is equally ideal for startups as it will turn most of your expenditure on sophisticated machines(servers) into a one time investment on which you can further expand with minimum expense(client machines).

(Do lemme know if you need any help in setting up a thin client ) !!

Memories of the brutal execution of Daniel Pearl(a Wall Street Journal journalist who was kidnapped in Pakistan in January of 2002) started breathing in fresh air again as i was watching the latest movie “Mighty Heart”. This one touched me so deep, as i was feeling that back in 2002 when these events took place, i already witnessed one side of it.

yes, it was early in 2002 when US armed forces announced the attack on iraq and our own news channel AAJTAK went live 24 hours to get us the updates running. There i was who used to switch on the TV for 2-3 times during the night to take break from my studies and watch every update. That was the time when one day Kidnap of Daniel Pearl was also a “breaking news” and as we were already witnessing allot of violence so it came up as just another news to me.

then as days passed the newspapers started flooding with the daniel’s pics and his articles on jehadi groups and then came the news that they have killed daniel pearl. seeing that I myself was bad-mouthing these terrorist groups for killing an innocent journalist….and all this footage i saw as it was happenening.

with this movie i realized the other side of it…the suffering of daniel’s pregnant wife Mariane…the way she handled the situation, their innocence, the fraud pakistani authorities did with them and every disturbing helpless elements of it.

i really feel that i takes a Mighty Heart for these journalists to get themselves into the most dangerous situations to get us the real piece of news and i think its not at all about their job or money but there is a certain level of madness and passion which makes them go beyond the limits and come out with something extra-ordinary. remember our very own Barkha Dutt who was present with soldiers in kargil or Aajtak crew(sorry not able to remem any name) who got us the live footage of iraq war.

A salute to Daniel Pearl, his family and likes of him !! (as for the movie…definitely a must watch..Angelina Jolie has done justice to the role…)

Prashant just now showed me the financials of the complete plan which MTNL is going to offer to its Delhi and Mumbai subscribers. major change is that PC is not going to be of 4,500 but will be yours for 4,999. Details are as follows…

Tariff for the service is given below :-

1. Initially 500 customers will be provided in selected Areas only.

2. Booking will be done at Call Centre Numbers 22221500 / 1500 from 26.09.2007. Help line number is 1800- 115522.

The Best part is Subscriber has Nothing-to-Loose in case they dont like netPC , there is a Provision for BuyBack as well !! Read on:

• If the subscriber surrenders the netPC within first 3 Months then only Rs. 1,000 will be deducted and amount of 3,999 will refunded (provided no damage to the equipment)
• after 3 months the depreciation will be calculated @ Rs 200/month.

Dats amazing…even if you use it for 1 year by paying 4,999 then too if you surrender it back….Rs. 1,999 will be refunded…!!

for more details do have a look at MTNL netPC

with the recent introduction of NDNC (National-Do-Not-Call) Registry the irritation levels of the mobile subscribers were supposed to go down drastically BUT my experience says its happenening the other way round.

As a victim of telemarketing companies i used to receive more than “20 calls” (just imagine !!) a day for things ranging from credit cards to personal loans to insurance etc..etc..  and on some days even more than 20. i started feeling like a Call Center employee (an in-bound one ;)) whose job was to pick up the call, provide the calling ladies with the info they are asking for and try to solve their problems (read: help complete their targets).

yes , it happened to me on occassions when the sweet calling voices :P asked me to add one more credit card to my wallet so that she will be able to compelete her target for this week.

Huh!!…finally the launch of NDNC was a relief (atleast i thought so..). but as per the current scene the things are getting worse. sample this convo:

Phone: Tringgg…Trinnngg !! (a gurgaon number)

Me: Hello?

Ms. X: Hello sir, i m calling on behalf of XYZ Bank and our bank is offering you a lifetime free credit card.

Me: [a bit Irritated] Thank you, i dont need it but tell me one thing HOW THE HELL YOU DARED TO CALL ME…dont you know about Do-Not-Call list??

Ms. X: [smiling..probably] yes sir i know and your number was not on NDNC..dats y i called !!!

and i was knocked out at the first question only….this really came as a surprise to me. Instead of this she could have told me DIRECTLY saying : “i called you because you are a fool who dint care to get registered on NDNC and we are going to harress all those people like you till they get their numbers registered”

suddenly she was sounding so wise and i was so Dumb & Stupid. so i kept the call at once and got my number registered with DNC for Hutch, but surprise was waiting for me the other day as well.

sample another convo the very next day:

Phone: Tringgg…Trinnngg !! (again a Gurgaon number)

Me: Hello?

Ms. X: Hello sir, i m calling on behalf of XYZ Bank (same bank) and our bank is offering you a lifetime free credit card.

Me: [Irritated like Helll..] HOW THE HELL YOU DARED TO CALL ME…I am already registered with NDNC Registry and i can screw you people for calling me like this. yestereday also i received a call from your bank….Grrr…Grrr…..

Ms. X: [smiling (again)….probably] yes sir, you might be on that list but your number has not been updated with the list yet and …dats y i called !!

Me: [furious] What the hell not updated…so that means you will keep bugging me like this till its not updated?????

Ms. X: Maybe Yes…[and…Disconnected]

She kept the phone and left me wondering

Has NDNC Registry given the telemarketeers a new excuse to bug mobile subscribers who have not registered??

Why is anybody (TRAI) not asking Tele-Marketing companies from where did they manage that database for calling ??

Shouldnt they be screwed for calling anyone only??

Let me have your views on it…..