The Tech Fests at colleges and IBM Technical Contest

IBM Technical Contests rocked at 18 different Technical Festivals held at colleges all over India in 2009. Like "The Great Mind Challenge" - TGMC (it entered Limca book of records) which engages students on various IBM products and technologies, IBM Technical Contest was yet another way to engage the student community in the Gen Next Technology skills like SOA, Web 2.0, Cloud Computing, Enterprise Computing, Green IT and many more.. and all this as part of the Technical Festival that happens at most of the colleges in India. It was also an innovative way to get the best bang for the buck / ROI for IBM investments / sponsorships.. With this the students got aware of the Gen Next skills required in the industry and some of the IBM prducts and websites (like IBM DeveloperWorks)
The format of the contest is fairly simple - once the sponsorship money is agreed, the students/collegs select te focus technology area which becomes the theme for the event. For example at the VNIT Nagpur - AXIS 2009 event, they chose Web 2.0. Being the evangelist for this this subject matter, I got to witness this contest as the judge.
The Phase I, which could start upto week ahead of the actual event is held online and the goal is to drive heavy participation from neighbourhood.. all the colleges in the vicinity, including the host college... this is a simple multiple choice objective test to eliminate all but 50 top participants who enter the phase II. The phase II happens typically on the last or the second last day of the fest at the college in the morning where the 50 participants are imparted yet another objective multiple choice test - this time around the skills/ knowledge are relevent to IBM products / technology. This round is to select the 5 finalists.. who get 3-4 design problems which they are expected to solve and present. During the Final Round that happens on the stage, the finalists presnt their solutions to the audience and the judges (IBM and Faculty). They are judged on three factors - Innovation, Technical Depth and Breadth and Presentation skills. The winner gets a laptop and 2 runners up get some goodies like laptop bags/t-shirts and most importantly recognition/certificates..
It was real fun driving this contest with the virtal team within IBM and the students who srove a large part of it...

Going to Gwalior as a speaker at the ICPC Contest (held at IIIT Gwalior) was the most memorable travel I had in last couple of years. We reached Agra on Friday and got to know that Taj is closed on Fridays. However this was blessing in disguise, we had to wake up 5:00 AM in morning and rush to see the wounder at the dawn as I had to rush to Gwalior before 10:00 AM to give my speech.

At the iCMG Architecture Summit

I was at the iCMG Architecture Summit event today and will be there tomorrow- some interesting takeaways

1. It was all about Architecture, Architecting, Architects... found the messages to be salesy
2. QoS - After Architecture think about QoS first, important and interesting thought... It ought to be covered under NFRs.
   
3. Simplicity vs Complexity - the KPIT model of Standardize, Customize and Personalize
4. It was a pleasant surprise to hear Upal from DLF talking about some of the implementations for BPM, Workflows and Land Records Management system. Something that was designed and implemented by IBM and the Lab Services team.. where I belong
5. The most thought provoking, amusing yet hurting talk of the day was from Mr. Pandey about the Water Management project that he helped Karnataka State Government to define and evaluate vendors for implementation.
   
6. Outside-in thinking - it was about the way thinking hats need to be worn by UI designers.. I found it all related to what we call Consumability and User Centered Design at IBM.
7. There were couple of Panel discussions at the end of the day-
   

• Project Managers vs IT Architects - supposedly a close to heart topic, however I found it to be a beaten path/topic - no new thoughts as such.. but it was good to hear that companies out there have started carving career paths for IT Architects.
  
• CIO Challenge : This was interesting and good food for thought.. It was interesting to hear from horse's mouth about what they care about when selecting vendors or making decisions when it comes sacking people OR alignment to Business AND how they deal with M&As and what role they play.. All what they shared was common sense and not so new yet extremely interesting insights.
  

Awareness

TOI has started a new week-end magazine called "Crest" and after two weeks of waiting.. (our newspaper boy never delivers anything new I ask him to deliver for 2-3 weeks until the time, I threaten to stop his services..) I went out and bought it at the stand. TOI as such has nowadays got really a boring newspaper... It is loaded with advertisements and classifieds and sometimes, I wounder why I need to pay for it.. they must be earning more from advertisements, classifieds and page 3... well I hear sometimes even page 3 celebs pay them for the party coverage they do.

But at least, at the moment, it seems Crest is different..

I came across an article on awareness which was not really anything new but put across in a really impressive way. It was about what most spiritual shools of thought teach. About mind control, living in "present" and being aware of what you are into at any given point of day.. be it eating food or talking to someone on phone.. stay involved and o just the thing that you are into.. sounded prescriptive, yet cool..

There were several other articles on politics, sports, art/culture, spirituality, travel, living blah blah.. which were informative and editorial style rather than the regular news reporting style..
I think I am going to stop getting the daily "raddi" of TOI and stick to Crest and may be switch to another newspaper for daily dose very soon.

Slowing down

It is almost every year that I (and actually several of my colleagues in my profession) come across this situation in November-December timeframe of having a lot of leave in balance and not knowing what to do with them. At times I have forced myself into vacations OR landed up not using them.
This year thought of this idea. Why not reduce my week to 4 days a week for last 2 months of the year. This will allow me to give myself some time on things that I have been longing to do - read a book, spend time with kids or read the newspaper for long hours, maybe spend some time taking care of trees that I have planted on the hill OR go to the gym.

I landed up implementing this idea and today is my third tuesday. The first Tueday I was on leave, I landed up sleeping a lot, checking mails for a couple of hours (could not resist myself) and reading a couple of chapters of the book "Nurture Shock". The second Tuesday, I landed up working almost half the day - there was something urgent that I had to close for the University Relations related work. Today the third tuesday was bliss - spent time reading "Nurture Shock" again, read the "Crest" edition of TOI and at the gym.

Finally here writing / reviving this blog... hope to write more often... from now on..

story of the year - switching the role

During 2009, I made the move that I had been longing to make since quite some time.. move away from people and projects/program management roles to technical / consulting role. I realized that things did not change a lot as I was still doing leadership role involving project/program management for a part of my job- university relations. The technical / consulting part was however exercised during all the instances where I evangelized Web 2.0 and Social Computing/software.. That was, rather is real fun and I have figured out that I can continue doing it with fair amount of ease. The next big leap is however going to be working for an end customer directly... hoping to get there during 2010.