Life Beyond Code » Innovation

CEREBRATE – A Real Mindshare Experience

Rajesh Setty — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 08:10:15 +0000

How long do you think it will take for 22 people to introduce themselves?

How about just over 2 days?

This was (almost) what happened at the CEREBRATE2010 event late last month (detailed write-up on Cerebrate blog here)

CEREBRATE is the brain child of Kiruba Shankar and it follows an Unconference format. I was so glad to participate in the 3rd edition. This edition was sponsored by MARG.

The Rules of Cerebrate

The rules of the conference are simple (read: the birth of Cerebrate by Kiruba Shankar)

Every participant (achiever) will be from an unique field. No two people will be from the same profession.
The event will always be a residential program, preferably at a venue that is away from cities.
There will be no audience. The only people who will be in the event are the achievers. There won’t be ‘talks’ but conversations.
Participants are highly encouraged to leave their laptops, blackberrys behind. There won’t be newspapers or TV either. The focus is highly on people interaction.

The event was one of the best I have attended in the last twelve months. I am already missing the participants and it’s not even been ten days.

What made CEREBRATE2010 successful?

Here are a few that I can think of:

1. Choice of People: This was an invite-only event and the participants were handpicked not just for their achievements but also for their mood and willingess to contribute richly.

2. Diversity: No two participants were from the same field. There was only one mountaineer (Sandhosh) and there was only one musician (Vasu) and there was only one designer (Ramesh) and there was only one historian (S.Muthiah) and so on.

3. Egalitarian Approach: From the get go, the approach was egalitarian and within minutes the participants felt “very” comfortable being in the group. There was no time needed for “warm ups” and “small talks”

4. No-holds barred Conversations: Every participant shared with an open mind and an open heart. Each one had their trials and triumphs and they laid them bare. The richness of the conversations shot up by 100 times as compared to a typical corridor conversation in a conference.

5. Choice of Venue: The event took place in MARG Tapovan, one of the new properties by MARG and the place was simply breathtaking. When we were not engaged in heart-to-heart conversations, we were busy swimming (actually playing water-touch-rugby in a swimming pool), playing table tennis or playing cricket. The hosts (MARG) treated the participants with love and caring that is typically uncommon.

6. Listening: Every participant was “totally” listening when others were talking. The focus was on people and the conversations and not on what was on their Blackberrys.

7. Openness: Last but not the least, participants were open and believed in the outcome of the event even though many of them were participating in an Unconference for the first time in their lives.

What will come out of CEREBRATE?

Apart from lifetime friendships with the 21 other participants, one of the highlights was to create a book called CEREBRATEtweet ( in the THINKaha format). It is a completely crowdsourced book with ideas and insights from the 22 participants. Stay tuned.

---
Related Articles at Life Beyond Code:

Don’t want to miss a meal in the airplane?

Rajesh Setty — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 03:46:09 +0000

If you can’t sleep on a long plane ride, you have a problem – it can get boring.

If you can sleep very well on a long plane ride, you have another problem – like missing your meals.

I belong to the second category. So, when I don’t want to miss a meal or tea, I tell one of the crew members to wake me up or simply post a note on my seat to wake me up when they serve meals/tea.

When I was traveling to India via Emirates, I noticed a very simple solution to the problem. Along with the headsets, they provide “Wake Me Up” labels that you can peel and paste on your seat to notify them to wake you up.

I used these labels on both my journeys and they worked like a charm.

These little things are what I call micro-innovation – simple ways of solving a problem.

Note: The system is not foolproof. I saw two kids playing with these labels (sticking them randomly on seats all over the plane) – but something is better than nothing.

---
Related Articles at Life Beyond Code:

Please watch and contribute (if you can)

Rajesh Setty — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 18:48:12 +0000

Watch this short and touching video.

The performance is from students of a music school that teaches music to the blind.

The Southern California Conservatory of Music is the only place in the country that offers a braille music curriculum to teach musicianship of the highest caliber to blind and visually impaired students. It houses one of the largest braille music libraries in the world, and it also provides outreach programs to both blind and sighted children in the public schools who would otherwise receive no formal music education. After 37 years of steady service, this important community and national resource for the blind is facing severe financial difficulties, and has embarked on a fundraising campaign in an attempt to keep its doors open and continue its many programs.

I had an opportunity to talk to Dory Bavarsky, teacher over there and asked him about story behind the conservatory. Here is our conversation:

RS: Dory, what led you to get interested in this school?

DB: I was enrolled as a piano student at the conservatory at age 13. My teacher was Grant Horrocks, who along with Richard Taesch had founded the Braille Music Division of our school. I was studying classical piano quite intensively, and spent many of my weekends practicing at the conservatory. Since I was often there on Saturdays, I began to observe and then participate in the group classes for blind children. It was fascinating because the way these children were taught to engage in music was somewhat different than what I had been used to. Also, the range of abilities and disabilities presented in our group of students was quite vast and remarkable. I met children who had tremendous music gifts, including a few with incredible ears. Many of our blind students have perfect pitch, and some to such a degree that they can easily play back complicated music upon a single hearing. I was especially amazed by Rachel Flowers, who at age 4 was playing Beethoven sonatas by ear, though she could barely reach the keyboard. Eager to work with this special group of people, I continued volunteering as an assistant throughout my high school years. After graduating from UCSB, I was hired as a faculty member at the conservatory.

RS: Tell us more about the wonderful work the school is doing?

DB: Our school provides a variety of important services. We operate as a regular music conservatory, offering private lessons in all the major instruments, including voice, piano, violin, guitar, and flute. Our Braille Music Division offers the same level of intensive musical education to the blind community. We hold weekly group classes in Braille music notation, keyboard skills, and ear training, as well as private lessons for some students. In addition, the Braille Music Division has conducted numerous outreach programs at other schools for the disabled throughout Southern California. Last year, our teachers, including myself, visited three different schools on a weekly basis, and conducted music appreciation classes for their students. These classes involve playing all kinds of music, discussing it, and even giving the kids an opportunity to feel and play various instruments. These outreaches are an important aspect of our program, as they provided a wonderful musical experience for kids who richly deserve and enjoy it.

Over our many years of service, we have developed strong relationships with many other organizations working with the blind community, including Junior Blind of America, California State University Northridge, and California Transcribers and Educators of the Visually Handicapped. We are also the headquarters for The Music Education Network For The Visually Impaired, which is an information network composed of musicians, specialists, students, parents, and music educators.

RS: What can you share about some of the success stories of the school?

DB: Our school has had so many successes, especially in our Braille Music Division. We’ve had several students who have gone on to study music at colleges and universities. In fact, some of them have come back and are now working as instructors! We have also had students who come to our program unable to read braille. In several instances these students’ school teachers had declared that they would never be literate. However, music brings out hidden abilities, and after a few years with us, not only were these students reading braille, they were reading braille music notation as well.

One of our most inspiring students is one I mentioned earlier, Rachel Flowers. Rachel started with us as a tiny, nearly silent little girl. Though she would hardly ever talk, her musical ears were astounding. Over the years, Rachel has developed into an extraordinary musician. Her participation in music has also aided her development into a cheerful, talkative young lady. She plays piano and flute, and during the last few years become an excellent Jazz player. Last year, Rachel impressed some of the biggest stars of Jazz, including Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, and Hubert Laws, when she performed for them as part of an celebration honoring Herbie Hancock.

RS: What support are you looking for and how can people show their support?

DB: An important aspect of our Braille Music Division is that tuition for group classes is free for all our students. This policy ensures that no child is denied instruction based on financial circumstances. Thus, the conservatory has always relied on donations and grants to cover some of our operating costs. Unfortunately, because of the difficult economy, many of the annual grants we had been receiving did not come through this year. Simply stated, the conservatory needs immediate emergency funds in order to stay open for the next term. All donations help us keep our doors open and allow us to continue offering services from our current location. If we do manage to survive this challenging time, we will need continued support in order to continue and expand our programs. People can help us so much by donating to the school, and also by telling others about us.

Please visit http://www.sccm.us/Appeal/index.htm to learn more about donating to the Southern California Conservatory of Music.

Also, please visit http://www.sccm.us/index_files/Page1544.htm to view photos and performance videos of some of our Braille Music Division students. There is a terrific video of Rachel playing piano and flute, at the same time!

---
Related Articles at Life Beyond Code:

140 characters to make you think…

Rajesh Setty — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 07:03:22 +0000

I am 75 days old on Twitter. I have a long way to go there but I know that I have to start somewhere.

So, here is what I am doing on Twitter in the next two three weeks (starting Feb 23, 2009 to March 13, 2009):

Everyday from Monday to Friday I will have five tweets from 6.30am to 10.30am PST under the ThinkTweet category. There will be a ThinkTweet at 6.30am, 7.30am, 8.30am, 9.30am and 10.30am PST. My goal is to make every one of these tweets count – meaning make you think.

I am VERY confident of keeping this promise about the schedule. Why? (wink) because I have already scheduled most ALL MOST of these Tweets using HootSuite. I wrote them over the last few weeks in preparation for these two weeks.

I know, I know – Twitter is all about conversations. However, I think Twitter can be used for something more. To enrich and enlighten. 140 characters is a lot to make someone think. These 50 tweets will be my humble attempt to prove that.

Come and join me on Twitter on this journey. You don’t have to be on Twitter to follow these tweets. There is an RSS feed option on my Twitter home page and you can subscribe using any RSS reader. If you are my friend on Facebook, you will see these Tweets as status updates on my Facebook profile.

My Twitter Id is @UpbeatNow.

Have a great week ahead!

---
Related Articles at Life Beyond Code:

Venture Capital Story in Q4 2008 – Now Told Visually…

Rajesh Setty — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 03:18:23 +0000

They say, a picture is worth a thousand words. So, here is the story of Venture Capital activity in Q4 2008 in pictures – ok, interactive charts powered by iCharts.

Here is the first interactive chart that shows total VC dollars invested – quarter by quarter

You can see more than 25 charts sliced and diced by sector (software, life sciences, clean tech), stage (first time, follow on financing), industry etc at the NVCA (National Venture Capital Association) website here:

NVCA: VC Investments Q4 2008 – Money Tree Report

Have a great week ahead all of you.

---
Related Articles at Life Beyond Code:

Google Chrome: Focus moving to capturing “Real Estate”

Rajesh Setty — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 04:28:30 +0000

“Real Estate” is precious

Take Retail – The competitive advantage is in owning real estate

Take Transportation – The competitive advantage is in owning the Oil “Real Estate”

Take Web 1.0 – The competitive advantage was in Operating System “Real Estate”

Take SaaS and Web 2.0 – The competitive advantage is in Browser “Real Estate”.

Of course, hindsight 20/20 – we see that Google is entering into the “real estate” game in a big way.

Take a few things that people do normally online.

1. They search

2. They communicate

3. They share

4. They manage their businesses (they use tools)

In the web 1.0 world, the “real estate” needed to do these things was the operating system.

In the web 2.0 and SaaS world, the “real estate” required to build a big empire is the browser. The power is slowly being taken away from the operating system. Google’s move to stake a big claim makes a lot of sense (for Google, for sure)

More about Google Chrome from Michael Arrington here and here.

More from Google’s Official Blog here.

This is a very nice lesson about extending the value chain one step at a time. Not just Google, every business can design and execute on this. Of course, not at this scale but the thinking has to be the same. For a brilliant explanation of the concept, please refer to Adrian Slywotzky’s work. Overview can be found in this book “How to Grow When Markets Don’t”

All the best!

---
Related Articles at Life Beyond Code:

DVD Rental Battle Zone – Netflix vs Blockbuster+RedBox+Hulu+Cable Networks…

Rajesh Setty — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 07:01:56 +0000

It is interesting to note that long ago Netflix ignited the change in the way DVD rental market worked.

Netflix model was simple and the core still continues to be the same. For a flat monthly fee, you can rent as many DVDs as possible and you can keep them for as long as you want. Depending on your plan, you could have as little as 1 DVD or as much as 5 DVDs with you.

It seemed like there is no stopping for Netflix.

Today, I think the playing field is changing again. While Netflix continues to enjoy the advantage of their innovation, it is now being attacked by a number of players. Here is the list of companies that are not allies but each one of them are trying to take a piece of the market.

1. Blockbuster: Has an offline and online strategy. You can rent online and return offline. Netflix cannot do it unless it has an offline presence. Plus, Blockbuster dropped the rental fee for old movies to $1 for five days

2. RedBox: Redbox has installed kiosks in several supermarkets and MacDonalds stores. The focus of Redbox is to rent only the latest 100 movies or so for $1/day.

3. Hulu and Other Online Venues: Watch movies totally free

Add to this the Cable Networks and Digital Video Recorders (like TiVo) and there is a battle zone in the making.

I am sure there are more innovations coming up. This is a case where whoever innovates first and fast will ultimately win. Will wait and watch

---
Related Articles at Life Beyond Code:

Doing Good Via Spam Protection: The Art of Leverage

Rajesh Setty — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 14:37:44 +0000

Chris Albrecht at GigaOm writes a story about a Luis von Ahn (Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University) who is one of guys who developed Captcha technology.

The story is about how NY Times is using CAPTCHA technology to fix errors that crop up in their effort to digitize old issues. I put together a schematic to explain what they are doing.

As you can see whatever words OCR (Optical Character Recognition software) could not recognize well enough are handed off to reCAPTCHA which sends them to various websites to be used as “challenge words” for spam protection. When humans decode them as part of their “response” to “challenge words” they go back to the database as “error fixes”

This story for me is simply an example of brilliant use of leverage. You are breaking down the problem (OCR errors) into small pieces and parceling them out to individual websites. These individual problem pieces are part of a SOLUTION to a different problem (spam protection). People are engaging in solving the first problem as a side benefit of solving the second problem – meaning at no cost at all.

Simply brilliant.

You can read the whole story here:
CAPTCHA’s Can Be useful, Don’tcha Know

---
Related Articles at Life Beyond Code:

Innovation Everywhere – Now it is with sarees

Rajesh Setty — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 01:33:09 +0000

A saree is a traditional Indian dress for women. Not just in India but probably many parts of South Asia.

Kiruba pointed to a link where a store in Chennai (India) had come up with a Saree with a small pouch – a place where a woman can keep her mobile phone.

I don’t whether this will take off or not but I am all for innnovations everywhere. Hats off for trying. You never know what is possible until you try.

What was interesting with this was the attempt to “change the organization” of something that has not changed for a few hundred years. Let me explain. Organization is an arrangement of components. For a few hundred years, a saree was a long unstitched cloth. While there were a number of changes to the structure (like material, design etc.) never was there a change to the organization of the saree.

Yes, Saree was a long unstitched cloth but there is no reason for it stay that way. After all, there were not a lot of women in the corporate world and no mobile phones a few decades ago and now it has changed.

---
Related Articles at Life Beyond Code:

Behind the scenes – Dekoh; Interview with Vijay Pullur

Rajesh Setty — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 11:01:00 +0000

SaaS (software as a service) applications are now a “no-brainer” alternative to many enterprise applications. Consumers and business users both are very comfortable using SaaS applications. In fact, there are many companies that are actively moving their current enterprise implementations to SaaS based offerings. However, there are situations where it would be beneficial to have offline access to parts of the application.

Here are a few examples to demonstrate the usefulness of offlining:
1. Access to your customers, prospects and opportunities on the go.
2. Access to a product configuration engine offline – so that the sales person is empowered to create a quote offline.
3. Ability to provide survey participants an option to fill out a survey offline and sync. Up the answers.

Dekoh is a product that can enable this and more. Here is a quick interview with Vijay Pullur (blog: Software (Ad)venturing) , one of the founders of Pramati (the company behind Dekoh)

1. RS: Vijay, you have a fascinating story having founded one of the leading product development companies (Pramati) out of India. Please tell us about your journey so far?

Vijay: I and my brother Jay started Pramati in 1998 in India, goal was to build world-class products leveraging India’s strengths namely low-cost and great talent availability. The journey has been very satisfying and exciting one. We have built products that out-perform the biggest and best names in the industry. Our flagship product Pramati server competes with products from BEA, IBM and Oracle. Our recent product Dekoh is in RIA space, competing against Adobe’s Apollo product. We have two simple goals

1. Build products that our customers love.
2. In the markets we compete we should be innovating faster than our competitors.

That gives us a kick. We are very proud of it.

2. RS: What is the need for a product like Dekoh in the marketplace today?

Vijay: Dekoh is a Rich Internet Application and Social Media platform on the desktop. Today desktop and web applications work as silos. Look-n-Feel, installation, access and technologies used to develop these applications are very different. Dekoh bridges the gap between desktop and the web. The “Rich” in RIA refers to richness in user interface (Flash and AJAX), richness in functionality (desktop and web) and richness in availability (online and offline). Providing a seamless user experience for applications on desktop and web in both connected and disconnected mode is the goal. This is the next frontier for internet applications.

3. RS: Adobe has Apollo and Google just announced Google Gears. How does Dekoh compare against these offerings?

Vijay: There are several approaches to solving the problem. Each one attacks the problem from their natural strengths. Adobe Apollo is a runtime that allows developers to applications on the desktop using web technologies like HTML, AJAX and Flex.

Dekoh supports these and more web technologies like JSP, Servlets on the desktop. The key difference are in 2 areas. Web has moved on from 1.0 to 2.0, supporting just HTML, AJAX and Flash is not enough. Dekoh addresses this hole which Adobe has left. Dekoh is a social media platform on the desktop bringing web 2.0 functions like sharing, tagging, commenting, rating and RSS to the desktop. The second difference is Apollo applications run outside the browser, more like desktop applications. We at Dekoh believe that users are very familiar and they like using browser as the client and that should be honored. Dekoh applications run inside the browser.

Now talking about Google gears, it is about making certain functionality of web applications offline by re-writing them. It is not a desktop platform. For example Google gears application cannot show you local filesystem to pick a directory. Google gears is targeted at more Javascript heavy applications.

4. RS: You mentioned about offlining parts of a SaaS application for one of your clients. What was the need and how did Dekoh fit in there?

Vijay: Thanks to the torch bearer Salesforce.com. SaaS applications have become mainstream in enterprises. Unfortunately, world has not moved that fast to provide ubiquitous anywhere/anytime internet connectivity. Depending on the nature of the job connectivity varies. People who travel very frequently are the worst hit. Due to this access and availability of SaaS applications become intermittent. Dekoh has developed several key components to partition application and data of SaaS applications and to install the application on users desktop in one-click. Once this is done, the user continues to access the application and modify the data in a disconnected offline mode. We have a sync module that will synchronize data back to central server when the desktop connects back. The utility and user experience for SaaS applications get significantly enhanced with such offline functionality.

5. RS: Why should developers be excited about your platform?

Vijay: Dekoh is a open source platform. It is built using open technologies like Java, AJAX etc. It is very easy for developers to write applications on Dekoh. No new technologies or tools need to be learnt in order to write applications on Dekoh platform. As an icing on the cake Dekoh brings in exciting web 2.0 features to the desktop, developers can write applications and show them off to their network of friends and family right from their computers.

6. RS: Life is going on fine without Dekoh or Apollo or Google Gears. Some people may say you have a solution waiting for a problem. Your comments?

Vijay: Think about it, people said the same about telephones! I am not saying Dekoh is comparable in proportions to that, but Dekoh offers some unique features that can dramatically improve web experience of users. Offline is only one part of the story. The bigger thing about Dekoh, is it can change the request-response model of the web. For example, today users have to manually click to go to a website and look at new information or use the service. Dekoh can help users make time on the internet more productive by pulling content on their behalf. For online services, this is a platform to provide valuable user specific information even when the user is not on their site. This is a new paradigm.

7. RS: What were the challenges in developing this product? Now, that the product is out, what are the challenges you are facing in bringing it to the marketplace?

Vijay: The biggest challenge for us was to package technology components into an end-user friendly, zero maintenance bundle. Once we got past this hurdle, we are seeing so many possibilities of putting this technology to use. The challenge ahead of us is much tougher one, to showcase and tell the story to the audience. To build a larger community of users and developers.

8. RS: On the product front, you seem to be ahead of both Apollo and Google Gears. However, the other products are from Gorillas in the marketplace. How do you plan to compete with the size? What kind of help are you looking from the community (developers and users)

Vijay: Yes. We are well ahead of the competition. With all things we are currently working on, I am confident the gap is going to get wider. I agree we are the David fighting the Goliath. Technical superiority, innovation, nimbleness and most importantly our openness (open standards based technology, open source software and open mind to listen to our users) has started to create the positive word of mouth. It is just matter of time when mindshare is going to overtake muscle power (think what was Google when they launched their search engine).

We have created a platform that developers can use to write applications without learning any new proprietary technologies or tools. Whatever they write on the desktop can be shared and shown to their friends network. We want to hear from developers their experiences to enhance the platform. We have created several personal media applications for end users to use. We hope people enjoy organizing their media, sharing with friends. Any new ideas for applications can be shared on new ideas forum on www.dekoh.org, some developers may pick up the idea and turn it into reality. Dekoh gallery will showcase applications.

9. RS: What is in the horizon for Dekoh? Where are you planning to take this Vijay?

Vijay: We have tried to create useful value to developers by opening the platform. We have written several media and utility applications for end users to use and enjoy networking with their friends. We will continue to build on this. Dekoh is a good platform for online services/websites to create a desktop presence. Similarly, SaaS applications can leverage our platform to make their services available anywhere/anytime (literally).

---
Related Articles at Life Beyond Code: