Who? Me??

The photo is taken during one of our sojourns at lunch. A derelict police chowki in such a shambles. Are my taxes being properly utilized? Or are they being used to maintain public property like so??

Can someone tell me why

• Fares are never in round numbers
• The meter reading is never in actual rupees (don’t tell me there are digital meters, why could they not figure this out earlier??)
• If it is a public service, then the driver can still say no to you
• The petrol price and meter price are not Cause and Effect
• The minimum fare changes from city to city, although the average price of fuel and the distance traveled is pretty much the same

In my past 3 months at Illumine (which is a Knowledge Lab), one of the first thing that struck me was their emphasis on models. More importantly knowledge models … instead of focusing on how the knowledge flowing in the system (which what most of the KM tools focus on), the company focused on the model in which that knowledge was generated, distributed and improved. Interestingly, the organization themselves have a very loose KM in place. Right now it is basically a samba share of different folders. It’s that simple.

In an attempt to make sense out of the zillions of files on my current project, I decided to explore some interesting ways to ingest this content into a system. Immediately, Mediawiki came to mind. This is what Wikipedia is made out of.

The How

Installation was easy, you download the tarball from here. You extract it into your hosting space, and follow the simple and easy-to-use instructions in the setup wizard. Voila!! You will have a working wiki!

But that is the easy part,

The Cons

1. Structuring the Wiki becomes ARPITA (A-Real-Pain-In-The-Ass) ps – on a side note, I feel sad for all the Arpitas in the world
2. Writing and creating the wiki content is also difficult since you have to stick to the wiki syntax
3. It is not as free fall a structure as you can think it to be
4. n00bs do not want to contribute to the Wiki, they only want information, which means that you are writing wiki content all the time

Despite these issues, I still liked the idea of a wiki and am currently having my own personal wiki, because of

The Pros

1. A personal wiki becomes a KM meme, where you just ingest content and the sense and navigation emerges after a period of time
2. The final product looks smashing, helps me sort through the content
3. This becomes a documentation and KT process for me as well (not that I am looking for replacements!!)
4. The wiki can be scaled to my team members using the Discussion spaces, and it will also then clarify my knowledge meme

What do you think?

Wikipedia definition of Niche -

A niche market is the subset of the market on which a specific product is focusing on; Therefore the market niche defines the specific product features aimed at satisfying specific market needs, as well as the price range, production quality and the demographics that is intended to impact.

A micro niche is a much more focused and a smaller component. For example if you take people who listen to Techno music in the Indian market, thats a niche … people who listen to Tiesto only (and he is GOD ), then that’s a micro-niche.

I gave the music example specifically because I was talking to a good friend of mine about airing Techno. Niharika works for Red FM, and handles their marketing activities and although I am not a listener, I would have been one. Had they played Techno , then I would have been an ardent follower. Then it simply became an MBA-to-MBA talk, and the final answer came out as simply as this – I am not their target segment.

That’s why I have a Worldspaceradio at my home. Thats why I listen to the System channel. They cater to my needs, however small a business I represent.

I actually am willing to pay a premium for that service. What normally was free for Red FM or other channel users, I have to pay something like Rs. 3000 a year. But I get what I want at the end of the day. I think businesses should cater to more and more micro-niches, especially businesses which are planning to enter a red ocean. They need that small group of ardent followers. What say?

Why has it not still rained yet?

Since the day I got into an engineering college, my mother has been proudly saying “Majha mulga computer engineer ahe!” . I used to get amused by her pride, and it still makes me smile that she is happy for me (love you Aai ). As days went by and I graduated to become a software developer, the “Computer engineer ahe” line was still there. Even when I got admission into one of the better known b-schools in the country, Aai would still tag me with Computer engineer.

The point is that sometimes you feel stereo-typed with the tag. People still ask me to troubleshoot their Windows. I dont mind doing that, but to expect me to visit their place at Borivali just because something is wrong with their Internet Explorer?? Sometimes I think I need a tag which defines my work and competency space better than “Computer Engineer”.

When I started working in a start-up, explaining to my family what I do became slightly more difficult. I was in charge of handling and building the technology on an entire organization. A lot of work which required a considerable bandwidth of know-how across the tech domain – a CTO in a nutshell. Whenever someone would ask, prompt would come the reply “Majha mulga computer engineer ahe!” . I kind of prefer IIM grad, but I dont think many people know about them – with people I mean the old aunty types, who ask your mother (in a nasal twang) “Kaay karto tumcha mulga?” The ones that sometimes do know about then quip “Oohh! Ahemadabad hoy?”, mother then simply says “To computer engineer ahe!!”” . Then I would butt in to say – “I sell shirts” rather than the oft repeated computer engineer tag.

These days I am working in a knowledge lab. We work on designing knowledge interventions and designing models which can change communities to become more productive and human oriented. I hope I got it right in this one line. My specific job entails a mini-CTO who is in charge of taking care of all technology details. Now what?!? I think “Majha mulga computer engineer ahe!”  is there to stay

This is a follow-up post of my previous post on Perspectives and Co-ordinate geometry. Each individual’s perspectives form the different axes on which the individual perceives the world – and judges the world, so you have (happiness-sorrow axis, good-bad axis, moral-immoral axis, ethical-unethical axis, and so on). Each of these axes define who you are, your values, your beliefs, et al. If I were to map each of these axes against the society’s axes, then we can plot an individual on the society space (its an n-dimensional space, mind you).

Now, get this. The origin of the society (the norms dictated by the society) represented by (0,0,..,0) would be at a certain distance from your own origin say (1,2,1,-4,…,3). The vector (going outwards from the origin) which connects your origin to the society’s origin is your vector of existence. Every individual has his vector of existence. The people who are afraid of society and peer pressure have their origins closest to the society’s origins. Carefree people tend to be away from that origin. The more deviant you are to the society, the further you would be from the origin.

What makes a society? You, me and everybody. Thus, the society is a summation of these vector misalignments. And that my friend defines the origin of the society. Over a period of time, the origin naturally shifts – it shifts because many people change their origins (values, beliefs, etc), thus ensuring that the society also goes through that same shift (although much more gradually). A fact that would have been a taboo for the society would be a norm today. Take mini-skirts for instance or gay rights. Society changes its norms, because the collective changes their norms. The origin has shifted!!

This is going to be a philosophical post, don’t say that I did not warn you at the beginning. But, I have came across an a-ha! for myself at work. This just does not apply simply to Good v/s Evil, but it can be applied to life itself.

Good and Evil are two sides of the same coin, that means, if I were to have an axis (similar to say X-axis), then Evil will be on the left hand side of the Y-axis and Good will be on the right hand side. Thus, Good and Evil are opposites. Now, my friend, what do you do to eliminate Evil? Think. Don’t move ahead and read the answer, please think. Think Co-ordinate Geometry.

You delete the origin (0,0), you take out the Y-axis. You take out the definition point at which Good starts being Evil. You take out that Evil-defining-perspective (Y-axis). I am defining each axes as a perspective on life, and thus, a way of defining (aka constraining) your perspective. Take out the Y-axis and now you have only a degree of Goodness left.

Now, ask yourself – what happens when you take away the X-axis? That translates into a change in your perspective. A shift which fundamentally changes the way you look at things, look at the world. How much more of the co-ordinate geometry concepts can I apply on this? Does this make sense to you? Would appreciate some feedback on this.