SearchCamp.in, 6-7 October, Tidel Park Chennai

'SearchCamp is a two day event aimed to bring together the best minds from the Search Engine Marketing space to talk about search engine advertising, including optimization and marketing issues. This event is the first of its kind in India and will feature workshops, debates and keynotes on the present state and evolution of Search Engine Marketing.'

So join in if your calendar is free on these dates. More here . Door donation of Rs 500 would be charged to meet expenses.

LLFMF-3 : At the end of the day, we are all humans ...

What is LLFMF ?

I have written about this particular aspect of my Father even before. But it just got refreshed when an officer who worked with my father talked about his experiences recently.

This officer was very famous for the kind of punishments that he used to hand out to people.And obviously, his techique works beautifully in any Armed force. Jawans would be under constant fear and tht would enable strict discipline. So once, it so happened that this officer got posted under my Father. Something terrible happened one day and he walks into my Father's cabin and says 'Sir, This guy has done this thing and Iam suspending him from service with immediate effect'.
My father's reply : 'Hey, how are you doing, long time since you came this side. Sit down , lots of things to talk'. And he rings a small bell beneath his desk (Trivia: All Indian babu offices have a bell beneath the desk to call the peon !). The peon walks in and Father says 'Saab ke liye ekk glass tandha paani lao' .( Bring a glass of cold water for Saab)

'Suspending any person or handing out severe punishments is very easy. But making him realise the mistake that he has done is the tougher job. You have to realise that your action is actually triggering a chain of events. That guy might actually just complete the suspension & get back to work,never really bothering to realise his mistake.He might too become an officer someday and then underestimate the seriousness of such issues.
Call him up, talk to him, understand the circumstances under which such a thing happened, Analyze it and then decide about the punishment. '

Still not convinced, the officer says 'Sir, we should not think so much about people who are ranked so low. They understand only the language of suspensions & dismissals'

'At the end of the day, we are all humans. He is a Jawan only because he was born into a poorer family in rural India and didn't have much means for higher education. You are an officer today because of the education that you recieved,nothing else. Given the oppurtunities, he too might have actually excelled and sat above you in hierarchy. Understand that we all are just servants of the people , only the abstraction differs a little bit. He too has a family to support and aspirations and goals like everyone of us. At the end of the day, remember, we are still just humans '

Needless to say, the officer gets the point and remembers it for the rest of his career to share with others.

Dinner with Dilip Chhabria

I recently had an opportunity to have a dinner meeting with Mr. Dilip Chabbria, popularly known as the Design Guru of India. The meeting was held on the sidelines of a CII conference and Dilip presented an interesting session on his company and its work.

One thing that stuck me was the philosophy of the company. It's 'Wow'. Dilip says that they don't accept an assignment unless they feel wowed at the idea. I am not too sure about the strict implementation of it, but yes almost all his designs (of customized cars at least) would easily elicit a wow from us. He also says that he is the one man design boss at his company.

He takes a decision almost every 5 minutes, which in turn means that the company is highly people-oriented. Another interesting point was his belief that the very nature of work done there is a big employee retainer. When everyone working sees something new unfolding which wasn't there anywhere in the world a couple of minutes ago, it leads to an empowerment seldom achieved in other Industries. Pretty interesting food for thought, this.

Kalam speaks at Satyam

Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam spoke at the Satyam Technology Center last month and as usual he stumped everyone present with his sheer brilliance and ever charming character.

He talked about 5 beautiful points that everyone involved in any mission related to Science/technology ought to know and ponder upon.
The first one is of course the ability to attach 'value' to Science. It's commonplace even in technology companies to forget that we are doing something scientific and we do compromise on this aspect in the midst of running around our operational priorities. Dr Kalam illustrated this with an example of Sir CV Raman writing a polite letter to Dr Rajendra Prasad refusing his personal invite to the Rashtrapati Bhavan , because of the fact that he was guiding a Phd research student who was about to complete his thesis and Sir CV Raman felt it his duty to be with the student at that critical hour.

The second point was to make science a life time mission and not restrict it to a project/task. He described how Prof Chandrasekhar Subramanian used to travel regularly hundreds of miles in the US to guide his doctoral students who in turn also rose up to become Nobel laureates after him.

Next was his effort to make us believe that Science has become truly borderless. He quoted the example of Prof Sakman who was a German physicist & a Nobel Laureate, who attended medical schools across the world to make his research meaningful and closely worked with scientists across numerous disciplines.

The fourth point that Kalam stressed was the one that interested me the most. He said Science is also about converting challenges into opportunities .For this he gave the example of Prof Paul Crutzen , a Chemistry Nobel. Prof Paul was initially interested in pure sciences but took up a job in a different area due to some constraints. But he kept alive his passion and that very passion came to his aid when he faced a challenge in a later assignment leading him to the highest scientific honour.

His closing point was on Scientific magnanimity. Norman E Borlaug , the famous agricultural scientist who was associated with India’s Green revolution was quoted this time around. At the age of 91, when Prof Borlaug came to receive an award in Delhi, he never actually talked about his own contribution to the revolution. He gave all credits to Dr MS Swaminathan and his team. He also individually pointed out the chief contributors from the audience who were of course distinguished scientists from their respective fields. Dr Kalam stressed on the fact that only this kind of Scientific magnanimity could do wonders in nurturing young talent and building team spirit.

The talk then progressed more into specifics which won't be of general interest here. All in all a great learning experience from a truly humble teacher. Dr Kalam also agreed to join the EMRI initiative as Chairman Emritus during the course of this visit. EMRI or Emergency management research institute is the brainchild of Satyam founder & Chairman , Mr B. Ramalinga Raju. You can learn more about it here.