All posts by haikvr

zone

Flow – The Psychology of Optimal Experience

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This is a very interesting book by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

Have you ever wondered the difference between pleasure and enjoyment?

Pleasure : 

When you are involved in a pleasurable activity – it takes your mind out of the worries you are having ( watching TV to escape from stress ) and satisfies the needs of the moment ( drinking coke to quench thirst ).

Enjoyment : 

An “enjoyable” activity, not only gives you pleasure – but gives you the feeling of fulfilment, the feeling of joy and living life.

You need to put some effort to “enjoy”. Playing a guitar, compiling linux, playing badminton – all these are very enjoyable activities. It takes effort, requires skill, practise and is extremely rewarding in the end.

There needs to be clear goals and feedback in such activities. 0 errors, 0 warnings is the reward in the end – till then you should keep tweaking,do more research, try different approaches.

You lose your self-consciousness and sense of time. Your entire concentration is on the job at hand – and will give you immense enjoyment.

Autotelic Experience

When you have really enjoyed an activity – you had just had an autotelic experience. 

When you solve a sudoko puzzle – you really do not gain anything in the end. The boxes get filled – so what? It is the time you spent solving the puzzle that gives the maximum enjoyment. This is an example of Autotelic experience. The reward is the activity itself.

There are some who can derive this experience on all the activities they do in a day – watering plants, washing the car, answering customer support emails. These autotelic personalities can go from one task to the other – and their mind is always in the “zone” – they are happy throughout the day – they are immersed in the “now” and they enjoy their life.

There are lot of by-products – the task gets completed perfectly. There is a sense of peacefulness around this person – which affects everyone else in a positive way. It is a joy to work along side such people.

So how can one cultivate an Autotelic personality? :

The suggestion given by Mihaly is quite simple – for any activity :

Set a goal
Become immersed in that activity
Pay attention to what is happening
Learn to enjoy the immediate experience.

In Conclusion :

I started observing that I go into the “zone” when I code or when I write a blog post. I have talked about it here – http://venkat2.blogspot.com/2009/08/getting-into-zone.html.

This book just opened my inner brain – there are so many activities that we do in a day – exercise, playing with a kid, washing the car, cooking – what if we aim to go into the “zone” in all these activities? Thats when we will get “flow” in our life.

Then life would be more enjoyable – and more meaningful.

Peace.

developer

How to handle Developers!

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Here are a few tips if you get pushed to managing a team of code monkeys..err..developers.

1. Deadline is 8 hours away and they are whiling away time by reading Joel Sposky or watching a South Indian actor dancing in a superman costume.

Ignore this – they are just warming up.

2. After the above intellectual stimulation they go for coffee.

Again, be patient. They are refueling.

3. Call them for a meeting to explain how grave the situation is. Only 6 hours is left.

Stop stop. Don’t call them for a meeting now, it will just drain the warm up and caffeine effect they are having now. They are about to enter their “zone” where things will start “flowing”.

4. How to know what the status is?

Hmm..it is a difficult thing. If you send an IM or an email it will interrupt their flow which will make them very angry, or they might mistake you for micro managing things. Wait for one of the developers to go for a bathroom break and follow them there. Of course you should be of the same gender.

There you ask – hi hows it going you are aware of the deadline today right? If the specimen nonchalantly asks – “what deadline” – don’t panic. He is just messing with you. In fact the developers are very conscious of not being fired / or not getting the next hike – they usually would have a mammoth credit card bill – because of a 3G iPhone, or a flight ticket to Ladakh..

So don’t worry..patiently explain to him that the clients want this by EOD – so it will be great if we can deliver it. He will just say a hmm and will take his own sweet time to comb his hair, or gargle, or one of the thousand things he can do to frustrate you – so do not wait for him but move back to your seat. Things are going smooth – if there was any problem or the deadline cannot be met he would have told you – trust me on this.

5. You see a few developers packing their bags

Time to go ask your QA team if everything is fine. If you had not troubled the developers throughout the day there is a good chance the stuff is done well and your team has met the deadline. Now you can prepare for the telecon with the clients and draft the congratulatory email to the team.

Of course it is not this cut and dry. Use your judgement – you will get better at it as you go. Understanding the developers mindset is having half the battle won.

environment

Earth hour is a sick joke on us

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So you participated in the Earth Hour? Good for you – this will encourage Bescom ( or TNEB or whatever entity ) to give more power cuts – Oh so our customers don’t want power – lets cut some more. 

There are so many power cuts in a day for varying durations. Our office UPS beeps almost the entire day – and I have started getting “flow” when I hear the beeps. At times when the beep stops ( because power is back ) I start browsing and cannot concentrate on my work.

We have placed an order for one more home and lighting UPS – Jan Feb we were able to manage without a fan, but now it is unbearably hot. The term “sweat equity” takes a different meaning for us! 

Anyway, I applaud the western world to interrupt the power for an hour in a year. Great. I wish they do it every week. And also they switch off the AC and lighting on weekends when they leave office. 

And we Indians – let us see how to increase power production. I initially thought I will go with the flow and participate in Earth Hour – but later realised we are kicking ourselves in the butt – why will I sit in darkness – let me enjoy the little power Bescom had blessed us with. 

With the nuclear technology US is going to give us ( thanks to Manmohanjee risking his turban et all ) , I am waiting for some enterprising hackers from national market to  come up with a desk top mini nuclear fission reactor to ease our power woes. I will buy one – even if it is going to mutate me into an ogre!





inspiration, occ, startup

Sharad Sharma’s talk in Bangalore OCC – Mar 21

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Today I attended the Bangalore Open Coffee Club’s meeting in an interesting venue called Jaaga. Before I  jump into Mr.Sharad Sharma’s speech / adrenaline shot – will talk a little about Jaaga. It is spear headed by Freeman Murray and Archana Prasad. They have identified an unused piece of land – and has built this structure with minimal and eco-friendly materials. This space can be used by NGOs or communities who want a place to get together, startups can come and plug in etc.  They call it the Urban Community Art Architecutre Experiment – http://jaaga.wikidot.com/start. Brilliant concept and I am sure you will be visiting this place sometime in future – it is going to take off well. 
Now to the Orbit Change Catalyst’s lecture ( thats his twitter bio  http://twitter.com/sharads ) 
Mr.Sharad Sharma took us through his entrepreneurial journey and kept giving his insights and his learning peppered with lot of interesting anecdotes.
1. Innovation Blow back

Innovations are happening right now in India; a few being cataract surgeries, cardiac operations at low cost and better success rates, bio technology startups, products on cloud computing, and so on. These technologies / businesses will now start out of the emerging markets like India and will become global. This is the innovation blow back.
He also asked the crowd to look out for the “Inflexion points” – Oil crisis is one, Systems biology is one ( where probability / mathematics is needed to take Biology to the next level ), Cloud computing being another. He advised to identify the inflexion point that excites you – “pick the one that tickles you to death”.
Some interesting anecdotes:
* CDMA technology – first showed up in Korea ( because they could not penetrate US, Europe market where GSM was entrenched ) – and now it is percolating to the other regions.
* Airtel is having a return of 38% ARPU – Additional Revenue Per User. Whereas Verizon’s return is only 12%. IBM, who consulted Airtel,  is now taking this business model outside India.
* AT&T approached Infosys in 1993 for a buy out. Mr.Narayanan Murthy politely declined – and today Infosys has 3 times market cap than AT&T.
*It took $89 Million to launch Chandrayaan. Ning has so far obtained $140 Million as investment.
He also touched upon Early Adopters Vs Pragmatic Adopters and how today with the recession – the market is left with only Pragmatic Adopters ( who make the purchase decision only after they are convinced of the ROI and expect a whole product unlike the early adopter who makes quick decision after a view of the part product itself) – and Indian market always had only Pragmatic Adopters. He hit it right on the head; if you have sold to Indian customers you will know this first hand. 
He credited Guy Kawasaki for starting this “Bootstrap movement” – where the startup has to think of making money from day 1 – unlike the startups during the dot com boom.
2. Essence of Entrepreneurship

It’s a state of mind and there are a few important things
Be comfortable to be the underdog
Hold a contrarian point of view
Ability to influence without control
Ability to tell stories.
3. Rules for personal conduct

He said 7, but I missed one of them 🙂
Give more than what you take
Set up people for success
Say what you mean. Do what you say
Share good news and bad news
Cultivate a learning mindset.
Cultivate internal drive for excellence 
Some books he suggested during his lecture that I will be adding to my reading list.
1. Getting to Plan B by Randy Komisar and John Mullins 
2. Crossing the Chasm – Geoffrey A Moore
3. Whole new mind – Daniel Pink
Towards the end he conducted a role play of how VC money, Investor (LP) and Startup funding works and why it is essential to pitch for only the amount a Startup really needs. 
This post is definitely not a complete record of the speech. Please add more if you were also at the event.
Finally it was great networking with lot of enthusiastic people – the next google / apple is brewing somewhere in them! Thanks to Amarinder, Ramjee, Vaibav and other organizers of the OCC for this event. 
cricket, ipl

What the doctor ordered!

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AI – Ad Industry
Doc – The Wise Doc

AI : Doc – we need a way to show ads on prime time.
Doc : Ok?

AI : We need to show ads every 2 minutes
Doc : Hmm.

AI : Is it even possible or are we greedy?
Doc : Any thing is possible my dear AI. There is a religion worshipped by Indians that we can exploit. It is called Cricket. Let us come up with a 20 over format and force the players to play fast – so you can show ads every 2 minutes – between the overs. Also encourage the batsmen to treat their wickets with scant respect – so they will get out quicker – and you can show more ads during that time.

AI : What about replays?
Doc : Screw the replays – no one will care how the batsman got out – either he will be clean bowled or caught somewhere on the boundary line.

AI : That is wonderful. God bless your wisdom tooth.
Doc : You are welcome my dear friend. Even though you did not ask I will give you one more opportunity to show more ads – introduce a “strategic time-out”. The viewer will now wait eagerly and guess the new strategy – and meanwhile he will watch all the ads you throw at him.

AI : Brilliant.

And so happened IPL1, IPL2, IPL3…. and so the soap mobile soda sellers became rich, the cricketainers become richer, the worshippers wasted their prime years watching cricket and tweeting and blogging.. err..hmm..ok bye 🙂

books, malcolm gladwell

Review of What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell

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In summary – it is another brilliant book by Malcolm Gladwell. A little difficult to read – he uses so many names, numbers and you have to skip them while reading. Hi Malcolm here is a suggestion – use footnotes next time – your book will be half its size and will sell well.

Here are some interesting snapshots from the book I still remember.

Ketchup and Spaghetti sauce

This chapter is a follow up to his TED talk where he explains how there is no one perfect “taste” but there are perfect “tastes”. There are so many spaghetti sauce varieties in the market and here is an enterprising person who tries to apply the same model to Ketchup and tries to go against Heinz – the market leader. However he is not as successful.

What I learnt from this chapter is that each product / market is different – what works in one will not work in another. When the inventor of “tastes” model was asked why it did not work for Ketchup he shrugged off saying “Ketchup is different”.

Enron fiasco

This is an interesting chapter where Gladwell argues that Enron never hid the dismal finances it had. It was all out in the open in the thousands of pages of SEC filings it did. So when the CEOs were taken to trial it was pronounced that they did not disclose the truth – the judge was way off the mark. Yes, they were responsible for the mess that got created and were mute spectators to it – however they never hid the information.  The point he tries to make is – it is difficult or at times even impossible to pick the “real information” hidden beneath the mountain of information.

How are we going to solve the problem of information over load? Is there another Enron which is quietly filing its annual reports with disaster hidden somewhere deep inside?


Talent myth

This is about McKinsey’s philosophy of hiring the best and staffing your company with them. This is what they advised Enron too. During performance appraisal, they split the employees into A,B and C groups. A – are the best of the best – the ones who got promoted got a huge bonus. B – are the mediocre ones – made a decent salary and encouraged to become As. Cs are to be fired.  They hired from all Ivy leagues, had fancy power points, ideas, business models – and the hot shots killed the company in the end.

In contrast, Walmart, P&G etc. do not hire hotshots, have a “mediocre” performance appraisal policy, conventional salary structure – and are still around and will be around for another century.

So, for big enterprises – perhaps the uber talents are not good. They have their place in the ecosystem and they would thrive well in smaller firms that are trying to become big, research and development companies, startups etc.

The above is just a snapshot of the chapters in the book. There are more interesting stories – dog training, hair dye market, FBI investigators on serial killers – and it breaks all the myths/stereotypes/conventions.

Very entertaining and very informative. Thumbs up!

Articles

Entrepreneurship ka side effects

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Here is a light hearted look at what a journey as an entrepreneur brings to you !

1. Sleeplessness

“Dreams are not what you have when you sleep, dreams are those that don’t let you sleep.” – Dr. Abdul Kalam

You would lay awake the night before meeting your first customer, day before product launch or because of one of the many excitements this journey brings. It is like when you are in love or you have spoken to your crush. And if you start getting a good nights sleep continuously – you should be worried – it is a lull before a storm!

2. Fatigue

You work really hard day in and day out, days at a stretch. And you would hit the wall. You cannot browse, go out, read a book or listen to music. Your brain will just refuse to co-operate. Solution is to just veg out – switch on the idiot box, make yourself comfortable and watch something that will not tax your brain. It will last an evening or a day max – see it through and you will be energised for another long run.

3. Ideas

Suddenly you notice that ideas flood your brain. Wherever you look around you get an idea. You read a news article, a blog post – and it gives you an idea or it opens a new path or teaches something new – so you can incorporate in your product, or the way you sell. It is great to get such ideas, but it is even more important to grab them and make them yours. Always keep a small notebook with you – and keep noting them down.

4. Respect

You will start appreciating other businesses who started from scratch – Apple, Microsoft, Tata, Infosys… list is endless.  You will start respecting their founders even more. You respect your teams and your own strength and shortcomings. When you meet another hard-working entrepreneur you identify with him.

5. Belief in Kismat / Luck

People might say entrepreneurs create their own luck. There is nothing called chance – it is all because of the dedication and hard work. However, each entrepreneur knows inwardly that there is something called luck. It visits them at the right time – whenever a bad news / failed deal happens – they know that luck is sure to visit them soon. And it does without fail to lift the spirits and keep them going.

The above is a list from my personal experience in running my startup – ApartmentAdda. What do you think are entrepreneurship’s side effects?

debug, developer, Idea, intelliJ

Debug PHP in IntelliJ IDEA

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IntelliJ IDEA 9.0.1 has support for PHP. And the fine folks at JetBrains have given debug support which is awesome squared !

In just a few minutes you can get debug going on for your PHP applications.
Note : These instructions are for the ultimate edition of IDEA ( not the community edition which does not have php support ), and Ubuntu 10.04.
1. Install xdebug :
sudo apt-get install php5-xdebug
2. Add xdebug configuration at the end of php.ini
sudo vi /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini
Append these lines at the end
xdebug.remote_enable=On
xdebug.remote_host=”localhost”
xdebug.remote_port=9000
xdebug.remote_handler=”dbgp”
3. Restart apache
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
4. In IntelliJ here is how I have configured. It is quite simple actually.
Here is the Run configuration

Here is the PHP Setting. Point the server root to your folders.

5. Now put a break point in your code and click on the debug button. A new browser window will be launched, navigate to the page you are testing and voila – it hits the break point.
I am yet to figure out how to display the variables with the values on the bottom pane. For now doing a mouse over shows the values which is good enough for me.
Happy Debugging !
2009, top 10

My Top 10 things of 2009

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The world is currently full of 2009 lists..here is the list from my world !

If you are curious – here is the link to my top 10 things of 2008 – http://kvrlogs.blogspot.com/2008/12/my-top-10-things-of-2008.html

10. Running 10KM/hr for 8 minutes

This might be easy for many – but this is a huge achievement for me. I could run for 2 minutes at the most at this pace before I had to slow down to 8KM/hr and then 6KM/hr. I have been trying to increase this duration slowly and nowadays I can run for a flat 8 minutes at this pace on the treadmill without my heart jumping out onto the floor.
9. Blogging

Started writing regularly in all of my blogs :
this one you are reading – kind of a satire nonsense blog – http://kvrlogs.blogspot.com
my entrepreneurial journey – http://venkat2.blogspot.com ,
and a new one I started this year – on books for startups –http://artofstart.theindianstartup.com/
The last couple of months things have been crazy and my blogging has been sporadic or I might have got a blogger’s block..but it is over now I guess!
8. MJ

MJ shocked the world for one last time.

Aside, “This is it” happened to be Prithvi’s first movie theater experience. We took him to a late night show expecting him to doze off. But he watched intently the entire movie and dozed off only on the way back home. The next morning he wakes up and first thing he says is “Akka dancing” ( sister dancing ).
7. Twaddicted !

This year I became a Twitter addict. I love watching the trending topics, discovering new sites posted by tweeples, reading comments about news as it happens. Obama winning nobel prize news was lot of fun – I was right there when it happened and shared lots of funny one liners with others. Twitter is just amazing.

6. The no beach year!

From 1994, the year I started my studies at CEG, Chennai – I would have visited a beach every year atleast once ( Juhu, Florida keys on the day of Tsunami, Galveston, Santa Monica, Chicago lake – technically it has a beach ). This year I went to Beasant Nagar 3 times, but could not go to the beach. I know it might not be worthy of a top 10 list…but hey this is my list 🙂
5. Ubuntu

I had an on-off relationship with Linux for the past 10 years or so – Mandriva, Red hat, Ubuntu, Suse. But this year, thanks to the gem of an OS called Vista, I started spending more and more time with Ubuntu and kept uncovering the beauty of Linux like never before. Now Ubuntu is my OS of choice and I am not upgrading to Win 7. Perhaps that shiny OS X might tempt me away someday, but who knows..with gnome 3 blowing the socks off OS X I might stay put.
4. Movies
I love watching movies. But this year I kind of rediscovered the movie magic. I could switch off completely from my work threads and let myself be immersed in a movie. Dev D, Slumdog millionaire, Avatar, Up..relished them all.
3. Swine Flu Scare
All of us in our home went through a bout of flu one after the other. The first one to get hit was Sangeeta at the height of swine flu mania and she almost wrote her will. Later Prithvi picked that weird flu and it was painful to watch that energy ball lie quietly on the bed conveying something through his eyes..
2. “Naana kaapi deddiee” – Naana Coffee Ready!
Thats my toddler shouting and banging our home-office door around 11.00 A.M every day when coffee has been prepared by his Avva ( my mom ). It has become our daily ritual. I might be the luckiest of all Dads ( touchwood ) to be with my son all the time – day in and day out. Starting Jan 1, 2010 I will be moving to an office and he will start his playschool life – hope we both can manage the separation anxieties.
1. ApartmentAdda : My life, My mission !
  • Receiving the first cheque for ApartmentAdda Premium package.
  • Cutting the first salary cheque for 3Five8’s personnel.
  • Registering 3Five8 Technologies Private Limited.
  • 10 PM Demo which went till mid night!
  • Demos in Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad
  • The small mentions of ApartmentAdda in print ( Deccan Chronicle ) and media ( CNBC TV )
  • And many many more I cannot divulge here – but can do over a CCD cuppa 🙂
Wish you all an awesome event filled 2010.
agile, manage, tips

Dont block facebook!

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A couple of days back a friend of mine working in the ad industry called me.

“Venkat, how do I block facebook chats, gmail chats? Should I block the domains?”.
Answer is No. If you block Facebook, Gtalk – your team will find workarounds. All it takes is a google search nowadays. It will annoy the team and you will get bracketed with the “manager” managers.
So – here are some tips on how to engage your team effectively and reduce the hours spent on SN sites.
1. Daily Stand Ups

This is the most simplest and effective tool. It is a core practice in agile projects – however it will work for any project / environment. There are tons of resources on effective standups. I will give a brief primer :
  • Every one stands up – no slouching, no sitting. Keeps everyone alert and they talk less
  • Stand in a circle like rugby teams.
  • Give brief updates on what you did yesterday, what is your plan today, and any impediments in doing your work
  • Any long discussions do it after the standup.
  • The standup is sacred ( start on the same time daily, cut off trolling etc.. ). You have to protect its sanctity 🙂
Advantage is – the team’s productivity will increase. They number of hours spent on idling will start coming down because the next day you have to give an update.
2. Give more responsibility

Ideally visiting social networking sites should be used to take a break from work – not the other way round. So make sure the plate is full. And coupled with standups they will try to finish off the work promptly.
3. Knowledge sharing sessions

You can introduce regular knowledge sharing sessions – can be on any topic – team could watch a TED talk, someone can critique on a movie, present on the new social media or any area you think will help the team become better. This will involve preparation ( except for TED talks of course ) and will also create a good competitive spirit.
So follow the above steps and your team will adore you and they will invite you for the informal team outings 🙂