10 Ways to Grow Talent in Your Company

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You must've seen many people leave companies and institutions sighting the reasons "I don't see myself growing here!" or "It's been 10 years and I'm still doing the same thing I did when I joined the company. So, I'm quitting!" This isn't new to you or me, but many a time, such comments are treated as a trivial one. In continuation of my earlier two articles on Acquiring Talented Individuals and Retaining Talented People, I will like to touch upon the Growth aspect of people in this one.

Our Secret Ingredient is Our People - Part II

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In my last article, I tried to bring out the importance of hiring the right people for your company. We did look at some of the areas to focus on and some of the best practices in acquiring the right set of talented and passionate people, and also some good practices that companies follow today. This article is going to be the second one of the three part series where we will look at another critical piece of the puzzle - Retaining People.

Our Secret Ingredient is Our People - Part I

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Yes, you read the title right! How many of you have this as the core mantra of your company or business? In a world where everything is viewed as a commodity whose value essentially keeps fluctuating, the people factor is the only thing that can reap constant (often increased) returns. What the heck am I talking about, you may wonder. But I think the picture from a Wendy's wayside billboard advertisement says it all!

Today, with advancement in technology and with just enough cash in hand, acquiring
a set of technology tools and a bunch of people to work is no big deal. For this discussion I'd like to focus on just  the people factor. How many of you believe that the single most important and influencing factor of your business is your people? Of anything that goes into making of a company or a

Identity - Online - Offline (Part I)

Internet dawned upon me quiet late as compared to the generation today - who are born into the internet. But ever since I was into the net, I have increasingly had this feeling of being lost in a crowd. I know you must be wondering why - read on, let me explain this...

The first encounter with the internet (the unknown) was about 13 years back (yes, that's all its been!). We got the first computer at home which boasted of running a Pentium II processor with 32MB (!!) RAM and 4GB (!!!) Hard Disk Drive. We had a dial-up modem from ZyXel which allowed me to connect to the internet at 32Kbps (!!!!). Alright, this is just to give you a perspective of the time in which I did what I'm going to explain.

I connected to the internet by double-clicking a

Born into Facebook

There was a time when parents took pictures of their newborn kid(s) and also family pictures with the newborn(s) to put them on their family living room. With the advancement of the internet and with people jumping onto Facebook (I choose to use this instead of "Social Network") faster than ever, these living room pictures have found their way to the "walls" on Facebook.

Blogging – A History?

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The internet has continued to evolve at an extremely fast pace from the day it was born to date. The notion of collaboration was given a different meaning the day internet was born. Collaboration has, since then, been re-defined with the advancement of technologies in the web space, and we have increasingly started to live in a time-warp.

Before the internet era, the printed media was a dominating medium for sharing of news and related buzz. With the advent of internet and web-media, news and the associated buzz started to change and got better. But again, this didn’t give readers a way to participate in the process – there again came a need to have a collaborative medium to share news and exchange views. A web diary, more often known as a web log, was one of the first forms of blog that came to be used.

Twitter, Trade and Global Economy?

Having passively observed Twitter grow from a mere status update tool to a buzz, I must admit that the creation of Twitter has been a truly open creation. Twitter has given birth to a whole new set of business models and also tools and platforms.
Having said that, here is something that I'd like to share with you.....something that I've been thinking about for quiet sometime now. With the Twitter-effect being as powerful as an avalanche, how can it really affect world markets? Here is a case - How would it be if a successful stock market trader with thousands of Twitter followers tweeted about him buying a stock?

Could that potentially trigger all his followers to buy loads of the same stock, thereby creating an artificial demand - everything in just a few minutes!?!?!! This can potentially help a lot of people make money while driving the stock market highly volatile. Well, this is just my thought. What say you? Given a chance, would you do something like this? On the other side, do you think something like this can help the world economy grow?

Geni, the Genius Genie

Oops...I'm not going to be writing about Genie in a Bottle or a Genie from Alladin's magic lamp. This is the Genie I discovered on the internet some long time ago. This Genie has phenomenally helped me connect to different people in my own family. This Genie has helped me know many unknown people in my own family ...wait...unknown?? Yes, that's correct - unknown. Read on to know more...

In late 2007, during some loose internet searching on a topic related to genealogy, I bumped into this wonder-full website called Geni. As expected from any inquisitive internet searcher, I went ahead and got myself registered with this service. That was it....I never even cared to get back to this website from the next day on (as my objective was different at that point in time - to search for some information related to genealogy).

It was in early December of 2008 (just a few weeks ago!) that my dad suddenly came up to me, asking me if I could help him document our family tree that he had written down long time ago. Ah, that triggered a thought in me - Why don't I see what Geni had in store? Does Geni still exist? As I was in front on my laptop (which I am most of the time!), I quickly went on and revisited Geni....and to my surprise, I did remember the password and username I had registered with!

What has happened from then on is something really spectacular. Today, I am connected to more than 2733 people in my own family!! I've been able to send birthday and anniversary wishes to so many people in my own family, that I was simply amazed by the sheer Human Network this helped me create from within my own family.

From my experience I can say one thing for sure - There is nothing in this world that's more powerful than a good human network! Networking and Collaboration is the key that enables communities, businesses, cultures and policies. Geni precisely does this - enables an ever-growing and self-participating human network within families across the world. Once you add a relative and his/her email address, Geni gives them the power to add people in their family (your extended family!).

Behind the scenes, Geni uses the GEDCOM specification. GEDCOM is a standard file format used to save, transfer, and transport genealogical information. To know more about GEDCOM, here is the Wikipedia page link.

So, what are you waiting for? Go ahead and take the plunge! Create your family network on Geni, and I'm sure the rest will fall into place automatically. Begin the new year with everyone in your family!! Good Luck and Best Wishes!

The Network of Knowledge - A Secret of Success

The success of many key people has always been a sight to watch. The way they get to face and address the most challenging of problems (so to say) is always worth a 'replay'. We all have this curious open question in the top of our minds "How are successful people successful?"

As mere mortals, its next to impossible to know everything beneath (and above) the sky - Let's accept this fact. Often people get caught in this Catch-22 situation when they vehemently pursue a dream of Success by trying to know everything. In Tamil, there is a famous Thirukkural that goes this way -

கற்றது கை மண் அழவு, கல்லாதது உலகழவு
The meaning of this amazing verse is - What one has learnt is just about a fistful of sand, what one has yet to learn is as vast as the universe

Even successful people have these mortal limitations. How do they overcome this? Here is the answer - They surround themselves with a very intense and valuable network of people. In the IT (Information Technology) parlance, this is similar to the internet - You have access to all the information as long as you stay connected to the internet. You are not bound by the limitations of your hard disk (brain) or your system performance (the human ability).

So, how are human networks formed? In the simplest form, there are two ways -

1. the information seeker gets a information source(s) (viz., a Mentor(s))
2. the information source voluntarily reaches out to an information seeker(s)

How can you be successful in the pursuit to seeking and creating a good network? Here are some tips -

• Firstly, keep your inhibition factor and the ego factor at its lowest - Don't feel shy to seek help. Neither should you let pride take control over your actions
• Stay on the lookout for a good Mentor. Mentors can be people who you might treat as a role-model or a person, who you think, can help you think the right way
• Believe in your network
• Don't get contented with the size of your network! More people you know, the more information you have access to
• Utilize your network - There is no point owning a Mercedez and not using it!
• Join networking groups - in any form
• Ask questions (however dumb it may sound) - It's not a sin!

Remember, Rome was not built in a day. So is a good network. It's a evolving thing.

A good network is like a Golden Banyan Tree. As years go by, the value keeps increasing as much as its foundation gets stronger. The number of points of connection to the earth (the world of information) just keeps increasing. The tree just gets stronger!

Stay Networked, Stay Inspired!

LinkedIn - Caught in the act!

LinkedIn had been down for about 45minutes today (till about 6:45PT). But when I accessed it at about 7:15PT, I got the below screen, which helped me understand that LinkedIn runs on Apache Tomcat and uses Spring for its user interface.!

For a bigger picture, go here.

Technology sometimes does such tricks too..!

Mashups and More from the IBM shelves

With an increased buzz around the Web 2.0 space and the concept of social networking catching up like wild fire, its been a very interesting period for web technologists and developers. With Google leading the bandwagon in the development of cutting-edge web technologies and tools, we've seen the hunger-struck Microsoft desperately trying to dowse the flames of Google's growth and in the market and the user mind share.

While all of this has been happening, off-late, I have been posed with one common question from people in my network and from customers (during informal chats). They have all wanted to know -

"What does IBM have in the Web 2.0 space?

This is indeed a very interesting question. Hence, in this post, I would like to point you to some of the work IBM has been doing in the space of Web 2.0.

The first tool that I'd like to talk about is the QEDWiki (v1.3 being the latest). QEDWiki is a browser-based assembly canvas used to create simple mashups. QEDWiki is a unique Wiki framework in that it provides both Web users and developers with a single Web application framework for hosting and developing a broad range of Web 2.0 applications. QEDWiki can be used for a wide variety of Web applications, including, but not limited to, the following:

• Web content management for a typical collection of Wiki pages
• traditional form processing for database-oriented CRUD (Create/Read/Update/Delete) applications
• document-based collaboration
• rich interactive applications that bind together disparate services
• situational applications (or mashups).

QEDWiki also provides Web application developers with a flexible and extensible framework to enable do-it-yourself (DIY) rapid prototyping. Business users can quickly prototype and build ad hoc applications without depending on software engineers. QEDWiki provides mashup enablers (programmers) with a framework for building reusable, tag-based commands. These commands (or widgets) can then be used by business users who wish to create their own Web applications.

You need to Register yourself to be able to download QEDWiki. You can also get to see a Demo of QEDWiki in action.

The next Web 2.0 tool that I'd like to talk about is IBM DAMIA, which provides easy-to-use tools (though a web interface) that developers and IT users alike can use to quickly assemble data feeds from the Internet and a variety of enterprise data sources. The benefits of this service include the ability to aggregate and transform a wide variety of data or content feeds, which can be used in enterprise mashups.

DAMIA lets you do the following:

• Import XML, Atom, and RSS feeds.
• Assemble feeds from both the Internet and from Excel spreadsheets; database support is coming soon.
• Import data from local files in XML format and Excel spreadsheets.
• Aggregate and transform a wide variety of data or content feeds into new syndication services.

When building a complete Web application that provides a user interface, additional tools or technologies are required in order to display the data feed provided by DAMIA. Mashup makers, such as QEDWiki, and feed readers that consume Atom and RSS can be used as the presentation layer in the enterprise Web application.

The third tool is the IBM Mashup Hub, which connects Web 2.0 mashup creators and situational application assemblers with the data and user interface components they need for creating their solutions. Mashup Hub provides two broad areas of support: feed generation for enterprise data sources and a catalog of feeds and user interface (UI) widgets.

Mashup Hub enables the users to perform the following actions -

• Define which data from an enterprise data source, such as a relational database, should be included in an Atom feed.
• Register existing feeds so they can be shared.
• Upload or download UI widgets, including those used by QEDWiki to make enterprise mashups.
• Participate in community interactions with other Mashup Hub users. These interactions include social tagging, commenting, rating, and searching the content of the Mashup Hub catalog.

Feed sources supported by this release of Mashup Hub include relational databases, collections of XML documents in IBM DB2® pureXML™, Microsoft® Excel files, comma-separated value files, Microsoft Access exported queries, IBM Information Server federated data, and the contents of ordinary XML documents. A user can also register existing feeds in the Mashup Hub catalog.

The fourth and the last one I'd like to talk about, is the IBM Mashup Starter Kit.

IBM Mashup Starter Kit is a preview of a new Web 2.0-based mashup platform that empowers business professionals to rapidly get the information they need, no matter where it resides. This toolkit enables users to assemble their own Web 2.0 mashup applications, solving business problems without aid from information technology (IT) specialists.

IBM Mashup Starter Kit consists of two technologies: IBM Mashup Hub and QEDWiki. IBM Mashup Hub is a mashup server that stores information feeds (such as in RSS, ATOM, or XML formats) in order to enable reuse and collaboration. Mashup Hub can also merge, transform, filter, annotate, or publish information in new formats. From there, the newly-enhanced QEDWiki serves as the user interface and allows non-IT users to "mash" information from any data source in order to create a single view of disparate sets of information in minutes.

IBM Mashup Starter Kit can combine information from databases, departmental information, personal information, or the Web. It rapidly blends information and Web services, such as weather reports or maps, with enterprise content and services, such as IBM Information Server, IBM DB2® pureXML™, and IMS (Information Management System) transactions and databases; and it easily "mashes" them together to generate fast, flexible, and affordable applications for specific business needs.

This new approach to delivering Web 2.0 applications builds upon IBM’s Information on Demand strategy for helping organizations seize control of runaway data growth and rapidly respond to emerging opportunities by using information as a strategic business asset.

Just to end the note, IBM's Lotus suite of software has an offering called Lotus Connections, which is a social software for business that empowers you to be more innovative and helps you execute more quickly by using dynamic networks of coworkers, partners and customers. It helps with instant features like Profiles, Communities, Blogs, Dogear, Activities and more.

Further information about IBM's Web 2.0 initiatives is available at the following Web site: Web 2.0 Goes to Work: Drive innovation and growth with Web 2.0 technologies.

Attending pipesCamp this weekend

There is an unconference for yahoo! pipes hackers and hobbyists happening this weekend in Chennai. Its called pipesCamp. Looks like an interesting one, and I'm thinking of attending this. No! I'm not that much into coding using pipes, but I'm sure there are going to be a lot of geeks there, and a good place to network and explore.

I haven't used Yahoo! pipes before, but a bit of reading helped me understand what it is all about. Pipes is a powerful composition tool to aggregate, manipulate, and mashup content from around the web. Like Unix pipes, simple commands can be combined together to create output that meets your needs:

• combine many feeds into one, then sort, filter and translate it.
• geocode your favorite feeds and browse the items on an interactive map.
• power widgets/badges on your web site.
• grab the output of any Pipes as RSS, JSON, KML, and other formats.

More reading on pipes? Go here. Want to join the fun at pipesCamp? Go here to get the directions.

Networking : Live, don't exist

Networking is a key differentiating factor that makes successful people stand out. In a fast developing world, networks are what help us move on. But I've seen many people who told me that they find it really tough to get into a group of strangers. Here is an excellent article that I just read, and thought of sharing it with people who have had a problem opening themselves to a bunch of strangers. Some of the key points the author tries to convey are -

1. Start Small
2. Stop Apologizing
3. Tap into your Primal Instincts
4. Be Yourself
5. Tap into your Passions
6. Ask for Introductions
7. Be Generous
8. Be Prepared
9. Follow up
10. Get over your fear of Rejection
11. Take Risks
12. See a Shrink

You can read the detailed article here.

2010 CIO Outlook

The Virtual world and the Real World - An Analogy

Internet's Time Travel - 1969 to 2007
Collaboration has been the key factor that has changed the world from the Stone Age to the Rocket Age. The real essence of creation of a virtual world started off with the invention of the internet. We've seen the advancement of the internet from the day when the first message was sent over ARPANET (Oct. 29, 1969) till date. There has been a lot of notable changes in this timespan (38 years). Some of the key stages of advancement have been -

• The creation of internet (ARPANET) - 1969
• Email was invented - 1971
• Telnet (first commercially available ARPANET) was created - 1974
• First Virus was created - 1980
• TCP/IP was created -1982
  
• Creation of the World Wide Web by Tim Berners-Lee - 1989
  
• First browser-editor, HTTP and HTML was founded by Tim Berners-Lee - 1990
  
• First audio & video broadcast over internet - 1992
• World's first commercially available Web Browser by Netscape - 1994
• Sun Microsystems introduces Java! - 1995
• Google was founded - September 1998
• First blogging service, Web Diary was launched - October 1998
• Napster was launched - 1999
• Wikipedia was launched in English, RSS format was created by Dave Winer - 2001
• Apple launches iTunes, MySpace was launched - 2003
• Mozilla Firefox launched - November 2004
• YouTube launched - February 2005
• News Corp. buys MySpace for $580 million
• Facebook was launched - September 26, 2006
• Google buys YouTube.com for $1.65 billion - October 2006
• Facebook Application Platform launched - May 2007
• Google Open Social launched - November 2007

As we can observe, the attempt has been the create a virtual world that one might want to call as the "Second World". A world where people could collaborate effectively as in the real world today. A place where the limitations of geographical boundaries would not pose an impediment to the level of collaboration.

Social Network and the Real World
The Social Networking phenomenon in the virtual world is something that attempts to accomplish the above objective. In my opinion, the existing social networking platforms like MySpace, Facebook, Orkut, Hi5, etc can all be compared to shopping malls in the real world. Shopping malls are places where one can find a lot of shops, people, gaming arcades, entertainment zones, etc. A social networking platform like Facebook does just the same thing - It offers a platform for people to share apps (like shops in a mall), share pictures and passion (a substitute to people's presence in a real mall), groups (like meeting people in a mall).

But in a real world, its not just malls all over! Malls are located in towns and cities, and cities are located in countries. Open Social of Google just answers this . It offers a platform for any social network platform (mall) to plug into its framework (roads linking malls!) and interact with other social networks as well.

So, is Open Social (or some other initiative in the similar lines) going to be the long awaited "Virtual world", or is it going to be Second Life? This is indeed interesting! Here are some of my mentations...

The Infrastructure Issue
When considering the virtual world, one needs to come back to reality to understand the fact that this "virtual world" is going to be possible only when the "real world" (where we exist today) exists. The infrastructure provided by the real world also matters when it comes to accessing the virtual world. Given the fact that different countries have their IT infrastructure in different levels (some with T1 and T2 lines, while the others with Dial-up connections), the resources consumed by the virtual world will matter a lot. A virtual world like Second Life badly fails when we look at this space from a real world perspective.

The Missing Piece
So, is something like Open Social going to be the virtual world that will look like the real world? Well, to be precise, the answer is No. Why? The real world is so perceived to be because we are able to see, hear and feel things around us. While a virtual world today has features that help us see and hear, the missing piece is the third sense "feel" - The ability to feel something.

So, can the virtual world really replicate the features that can help us "feel" too? Thats something we will see in the years to come. There has been a lot of research going on in the areas concerning the transmission of smell over the internet. The future is exciting, indeed!

I leave it at this. Should the collaborative bug bite me again, I'll talk about this in one of my future posts.

The Drupal-Facebook story

Everyone in the world seems to be talking about Facebook, and how to possibly use it in a way that would benefit their network and business. Infact, the announcement of OpenSocial by Google little did affect the fame and usage of Facebook.

Drupal, a web content management tool provider has been working on providing compatibility of its very famous content management platform with Facebook. The work they've been doing is really impressive. I just tried out their Facebook App module, and it looks promising. Though it has a lot of features missing, I'm sure they are working on them. Its still in the development stages, and hence the first official release might take a while to see the market. Nevertheless, its the initiative that matters.

Drupal For Facebook has updates about this initiative. Should you be interested in a demo of how this works, you have two of them to see - this or this.

I see a huge red ocean of Facebook apps in the near future. I'm sure there are many of them already with big plans of creating innovative blue oceans.

Open Social Launched!

Watch the launch of Open Social here -



Google has launched its series of "Google Campfire One" to interact with its developer network. Its indeed going to be very interesting to watch the space of social networking on the web in the next few years.http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/11/report-from-the.html

Marc Andresseen, in his blog mentions "Freedom wins, and openness wins". While I agree with this comment of his, given the situation of the social networks war, I think the key is the creation of blue oceans (Blue Ocean Strategy, by Prof.Chan Kim).

Facebook did create a blue ocean by having its platform open to developers and having a proprietary standard like FBML. Now, Google has created a bigger blue ocean by creating a social networking platform standard and by making the learning curve shallower for developers. In my opinion, Open Social is a true blue ocean, as it creates opportunity for other social networking companies to participate, rather than compete!

Who is next? Lets wait and watch this space..its going to be really interesting.

Open Social - The Killer Whale?

Open Social is the next big thing in the world of social networking. To give you a better idea of what this is, here is a screencast:


Find more screencasts like this on Ning Network Creators