Trip to Monterey Acquarium

So to ward off the holidy boredom spell V. and I decided to pay our piscean friends at the Monterey Bay Acquarium. Not the cover charge of USD 20 was a bit steep, I felt. However, since there was a plaque on the counter saying that the acquarium is a non profit org, and my dollars will help fund science and all - ya sure go ahead.

The acquarium was pretty nice. There was this exibit which was basically a large cylinrical contrainer filled with water and tons of achovies. They were going around the tank at a pretty fast clip - almost seemed like follow the leader. Of course since their world wrapped around themselves(kind of what Einstien said when was talking of our space time wrapping around itself), no one was following anyone. But it was a really stupid idea on part of the anchovies to do that. I mean they are going to get the food anyways so why bother going around in circles. Maybe they did not know that they were going around in circles.

Then there was this huge exhibit of jelly fish. I'd definately like to touch one. Though I am sure if I got an oppurtunity I'd probably chicken out. I mean who wants to touch that slimy thing - it is slimy, is it not?

All in all, a good day.

Terrible Tragedy

The tsunami tragedy has now claimed, according to most news sites, 120000 lives. What is sad is that we all, including myself keep talking about this number as if this was a score.

I don't think that this number does any justice to what has happened at all. Many families have been lost and in many families people have lost members. While it is easy to write it, if I pause to think about it, and translate that to my family I can't even imagine what I'd feel. I know that there was a bomb blast in Ghatkopar in Mumbai sometime back. My family lives in Mumbai and my brother commutes using trains that go through Ghatkopar. I know I was pretty worried when that happened and called up home to make sure all was well.

Also there are many families that might have lost a breadwinner, or lost the sole means of winning a wage - like a truck, or a fishing boat or whatever. And since the social security net in India(can't talk about Sri Lanka or Indonesia since I don't know much about those countries) is pretty thin, those families will have to work doubly hard to get back a sense of life.

I really don't think that numbers printed in the media even begin to portray what this means to many people.

[work] Meetings and conf calls suck

So I am still at work, at 8 pm, attending a conference calls with people in Japan. Not fun. And I can't attend it from home because I don't have a land line at home and my cell phone company sucks.

Anyways, while I am listening to this guy talk about internationalization and localization I started wondering why there are no guidelines for meetings and conference calls.

For example, in this conference call, the presenter had sent the slides ahead of time(a definite plus) and is now going through the slides, just talking about them in order. Now a value of this conference call would have been if people were asking a lot of questions which the presenter could have clarified. But that is not happening. The content of this meeting is a one day data transfer. I just can't understand why this could not have been done over email - giving people more flexibility to do work on their own terms. And for discussion we could have had discussion forum, a news server etc, just for this topic. The team responsible for this meeting could have had people(s) who could have replied to emails/posts on this discussion forum.

The value of meeting other people, discounting the media, is either discussing to better understand something, or come to a decision.

For the case where the aim of the meeting is dissemination of information or discussion, a lot of ground work can be done via electronic tools. Starting with sending email explaining the problem, to creating a discussion forum where the problem can be discussed. Of course defined roles, about who is it who will reply to questions on the discussion board will help.

Only in the extreme case, and I think such cases should be very little, where such measures don't help clarify the issue should recourse be taken to a meeting or a conference call. In that case, it should be someone's job to summarize the issues discussed so far. In such a case maybe only 25% of the time should be used to reiterating the issues - all people should have absorbed information earlier. The only benifit of reiterating information once again is repetition. The rest of the time should be for questions and clarifications. Another possibility is that the presenter anticipate the concepts that are causing most problems and spends time talking about it.

Since this is an open ended activity, it is important to have a time limit at which everything will finish. If people still have questions, maybe they can talk to the presenter individually.

The other reason for having meetings, as I see it is to come to a decision about something. Again, it will be extremely helpful if ground work is done before the meeting is held. In addition to that, it is imperative that the agenda of the meeting is circulated before hand. This should include the aim of the meeting, stating that at the end of the meeting the participants should have agreed/disagreed on stated items. This sounds trivial, but never have I seen a good agenda in my work environment.

A bad example of meeting/conference call I have seen is in which flow of information is one sided. The presenter does most of the talking. In such cases, I wonder why this information can not have been sent via email.

Another useless format is status meetings, where different agencies give status about their part of the project. What is useful here is getting information, which can be lost in email status, which can derail the project. However, the frequently of such meetings can definately be greatly reduced.

A pet peeve of mine is holding up a meeting/conference call for about 10 min, waiting for quorum to gather. How can you trust people to do the right thing at work, if they can't be trusted to show up at time? Really pisses me off.

Going back to the different reasons for meetings, I think it is very important to separate discussion and open ended meetings with ones in which there is a fixed agenda, and output is expected. If the two things are attempted in the same meeting then things get confusing and most probably the open ended discussion will overrun and no decision will be made. Plus I feel that since the door was opened for open ended discussion, people are apt to go into tangents. If this happens, no decision is made and guess what - we need to do another meeting.

Another red flag to watch out for people who will hijack the meeting. I guess the need for an owner or moderator of the meeting. The person who called the meeting should have a clear idea of what they want from this meeting.

I am starting to get seriously pissed at the people whose meetings I have to attend. Fast losing respect for such people. They have no concept of professionalism. While they might think they are doing the company a great service by holding more and more meetings, maybe even get bonding but all that is bull shit. Most of the times these people are program managers or laison persons. They probably get thier sense of how productive they were during the day by the number of meetings they attended/moderated in the day. But they are not the only culprit.

Ok it is half an hour into the stupid meeting and hopefully it will end fast. And then I can go ahead and waste my time in my way :)

[misc] Nil Admirari

I just read this essay by Paul Graham about Writing Essays. I found it very interesting to read. He basically argues about writing exploratory essays - the kind which are not, Take a position and defend it. In that one apparently misses out many subtlities. In addition it does not help in externalising thoughts, which is what any writing can do.

Nil Admirari is (apparently) latin for, To be astonished at nothing. People who fancy themselves to be cool try to achive this state. This is the opposite of being surprised, which is what is necessary to be getting new connections and knowledge.

[mba] First mid term and others..

Kind of long time went by without a post and I can blame it squarely on my midterm today. Today was the exam for accounting. Never have I had to study 7 chapters after 4 classes. But it was still good fun.

I am now supposed to know to do double entry accounting system with the first equation of accounting. There are principles and assumptions in accounting. Just have to keep it in mind that the principles of accounting are not as inviolate as those of science or engineering. Now, imagine, for a second if the law of conservation of mass-energy was generally to be followed, but the universe would not complain too much if it was sometimes violated. Well it would not complain, but the universe as we know it will probaly not exist. But the principles of accounting are only to be followed, most of the times.

Other than that it was fun, all in all.

But studying for the exam was not fun. Not that it has ever been ever, in all of my academic attempts. But it does bring out the best of my creative side. I can usually come up with multiple reasons of why not to get to studying, almost instantly. Of course there is this thing more important than studying which needs my attention. In this matter, Nike did a good job of creating the catch phrase, Just do it. If I start thinking too much about what has too be done, then I'll probably never get to it.

Another way I see this problem is the overhead of getting started. Dilip D'souza also echoes similar sentiments in his blog entry.

Well getting started is only part of the problem. Then there is the problem of distraction. I think computers have done a great disservice to me personally by being the biggest distraction. Think about it. Had I been living in the early 1900's and had been fortunate enough to go to school etc, I could have gone to a library or a silent corner of my mansion and there would have been practically no distractions. Or rather, at most, the occasional tree branch hitting against the window pane or something mundane like that. In fact, one could have died from lack of stimuli in those days. Maybe that is why the world population was so low those days. But now, fast forward to 2004 and you have what is innocously called The Internet(s). One is literrally linked to numerous computers and the the people behind them, turning our meaningless trash(just like this one). Distractions.. they are surely a ... distraction.

In other events, I have surprised myself by following baseball and the World Series. I think what got in interested was the conversation during lunch at work, with MR, DD and AY about how the Red Sox have not won a World Series title and the Curse of Babe Ruth. This guy Babe Ruth, was supposed to have been traded from the Boston Red Sox to New York Yankees. And since then the Red Sox team has been cursed. But, what kind of a name is Babe Ruth anyways? Who'd name their child Babe?

Anyway, with all this discussion going on etc, my underdog supporter woke up and I have been following Red Sox scores all this while - since the time when they were 0-3 against the Yanks. I still can't watch the game for too long. Might be baseball, or might be total lack of interest in sports. Don't know. But I did find out more about baseball and now I can atleast follow the terminology.

So currently, Red Sox are in World Series against St. Loius Cardinals. Interestingly, R is in St. Louis these days and he is supporting them. He might even go to Boston(for business) and while there, he says, he'll lend his support to them. Ya, as if that will help!! I am sure Red Sox will win.

On the underdog think, Nike came out with this ad about a boy in Fenway park wanting the Red Sox to win. Kindda cool.

[misc] performance marketting?

While talking with someone from a large Semiconductor company yesterday, I discovered that he worked for a group called performance marketting. It is generating performance numbers for marketting purposes. While the principles of performance analysis of chips remain the same, the end result, or the audience changes. Wonder what this does to the methodology they might use internally? Or even whether interpretation of data is now different. Also, he mentioned that their group works with consortiums etc to work out test benchmarks. A part of that is convincing the consortium to accept the benchmarks that will show their bench marks in a favorable light.

Interesting concept.

[news] sun allows their employees to blog?

I just discovered that Sun allows, and even encourages their employees to blog. While I am sure there must be guidelines for SUN employees to follow while blogging, it is still a commendable step. Wonder who must have come up with this idea @ sun. I am almost imagine the protests that they must have faced. So it must have taken a huge leap of faith for those corporate managers to let go of this control.

I think SUN is a cool company.