Tag: foo

The world without Microsoft Office

Prasad Ajinkya3 Comments

In a discussion with a friend (and an ex-colleague), we were joking about work life in general (euphemism for mutual bitching). It seems that a lot of us are destined to work on Microsoft Office Powerpoint and Microsoft Office Excel almost all the time; be it a job in the sales team, the financial analyst team, the business analyst team … Microsoft Office never leaves us.

A shared fantasy was, what would happen to the world if Microsoft Office suddenly ceased to exist … the following are some pearls from that discussion … of course I have added some of my own, and welcome all of you to keep on adding to this list through the comments –

  1. MBAs would not have anything to do apart from sitting in meetings
  2. Corporations would realize how overly paid we all are
  3. The consulting industry would come to a virtual stand still
  4. People will actually work instead of creating documents
  5. Colleagues and teams will start talking to each other instead of exchanging documents and Track Change (Ctrl+Shift+E) reviews and Comments (Alt+R+C)
  6. Wikis and other collaborative groupware would be put to use … heck even Google Buzz might be exhumed
  7. B-schools will be forced to change their pedagogy or they will be virtually assignment-free … wheeee!!

… to be continued

Bed-ridden

Prasad Ajinkya9 Comments

Last week, I had a massive muscle pull. So much so that I could not get up off the floor. From the floor, I managed to crawl my way to the bed in 90 minutes. The doctor said that I was not supposed to get off the bed for at least a week. Bye bye moving around, bye bye blogging and gaming.

It’s been a week, and let me tell you the week was extremely boring. Not doing anything and lying in your bed sucks. Big time. I managed to read a lot and think a lot more. But that’s about it.

Come Monday and I am aching to go back to work … for entertainment!! If that is not transformation, what is :-)

Criticism

Prasad Ajinkya4 Comments

I often contribute to the team blog of the company where I work. It is fulfilling, where else can you blog at work :-)

In the past two days however, the team blog … specifically my posts have come in the spotlight. By a critic … the comments are coming from a different perspective, maybe by someone who has engaged with the philosophy and found it either too abstract or too disillusioned.

The outcome being that there is criticism about the ideology and some more criticism about the author. Personally speaking none of my blogs have ever attracted much traffic, so I never had to face much applause or critique other than my immediate circle of friends. Critique from an unidentified source, adds that element of mystery and even a little bit of surprise (Ohh!! Someone does read my stuff!).

What I have not picked up over the 4-5 years of passively active blogging I have done is … how to handle criticism. A post I recently found is pretty good and maybe it will help other bloggers as well, so sharing it here.

— Appended —

Pallavi commented that the critique might just be a different perspective or a different opinion. The final choice of taking that is always upto us. I looked back at the comments I was getting, and have decided to take the new perspective and try something new on the team blog. Will update once I get the results.

Autos and cabs

Prasad Ajinkya5 Comments

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

Wiki as a KM Tool

Prasad Ajinkya10 Comments

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?

Micro Niches

Prasad Ajinkya8 Comments

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?