It normally takes a lot of turns and twists to find a new role / assignment within an organisation.. particularly as big as IBM. And my journey was even more interesting with me switching from management to consulting, 3 years ago and now moving back to management.. Officially, my stint in consulting ended in december and am getting back to old profession of management in a brand "new" role.. I leave behind the "Lotus" and "Collaboration" to venture into "Cloud"... :-) That was quite poetic, I guess..
Hope to keep the blog alive with this first post in 2012.
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Tennis and IBM Software Universe - guess what do they have in common
It comes every year and there's something special when it comes.. the IBM Software Universe 2011 is here.. It is happening on 20 October 2011 at The Renaissance Convention Center, Powai, Mumbai.. The same place where it happens every year.
It was Guy Kawasaki who entertained the audiences with his charming talk on "The 10/20/30 rule of Powerpoint" a couple of years ago and I still remember one of the year we had Mumbai Dabbawallahs who kept the audiences amazed with their presentation on their success mantra. It was Dr. Chan Kim talking about his Blue Ocean Strategy one of the year and guess who it is in 2011...
It is going to be Martina Navratilova who is probably going to share her success (18 grand slam singles titles, 167 career singles titles and 175 doubles title) mantra. and then to keep the spirit alive, there's going to be some entertainment from "Sunidhi Chauhan" at the end of the day.
Here are the highlights
IT Manager Day – 20th October
•Superior Content
–Inspiring keynote sessions by IBM Executives and Client speakers
–Motivational dialogue by celebrity speaker – Martina Navratilova
–Talk show covering real life innovations, results with IBM Software in India
–7 tracks with over 30+ track sessions, with elaborate sessions around Software Capabilities
–IBM product announcements from various brands
–Target Segments: FSS, Government, E&U, Healthcare & GB.
•One-of-a-kind Solution EXPO
–Industry Experience zones with ISV and IBM solutions
–Product demos - what is new from Lotus, Tivoli, WebSphere, Rational, Information Management, Commerce & IS software brands
•A Dose of Fun
–Unique experiences at tracks viz. quiz, game show, skit etc.
–Gala evening with Bollywood singing sensation – Sunidhi Chauhan
Hope to See you all there...
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Campus Net - IBM Remote Mentoring Project : Part II of II
My last post on this subject was basically an overview of what we did as part of this Remote Mentoring project and in this post I plan to provide a little more insights into what and how we developed, some lessons learnt during the course..
At the inception of the project, I had a detailed discussion with the girls and their guide - Prof. Mengale about the possible use cases / scenarios for the project and agreed to implement
For eg. a poll hardly needed any security or role based access and needed instantaneous aggregation of data while in case of an Election the data privacy and restricted access was of extreme importance and aggregation was required only at the end with access to aggregated data in a very structured manner (to announce the election results to general public)
The Time Table widget was the first widget that surfaced when the project idea came into existence, while poll, survey were very common applications that were not necessarily related to a campus / academic institution's requirement. Campus Placement is a very practical use case and deserves to be built as a standalone application - as a matter of fact could be a SaaS application (Software as a Service) which can benefit Academic Institutions and Companies across India - after a bit of research I figured out that there are already a couple of such companies which offers this application as a service for example
http://ecampusplacement.com/index.html
The Quiz was very similar to Surveys except for the fact that a Quiz required evaluation of the response from individual and declaring a winner while Surveys required aggregation and representation of the result set / data in a particular format.
The students found Lotus Widget Factory to be very unfriendly as the learning curve to understand builders was very steep. Nevertheless, myself and Amit helped them overcome the obstacles with resolutions that we learnt while we mentored them. To some problems they faced we did not have straightforward resolutions and only had workarounds. This is what we do in reality too when it comes implementing projects in real life- when it comes to taking a system to go-live, beyond a certain point we have to get the stakeholders to agree to work arounds and get the system operational...
At the inception of the project, I had a detailed discussion with the girls and their guide - Prof. Mengale about the possible use cases / scenarios for the project and agreed to implement
- A Survey
- A poll
- A Calender / Time Table (lectures, practicals, holidays.. etc.)
- An Election
- Campus Placements
- A Quiz
For eg. a poll hardly needed any security or role based access and needed instantaneous aggregation of data while in case of an Election the data privacy and restricted access was of extreme importance and aggregation was required only at the end with access to aggregated data in a very structured manner (to announce the election results to general public)
The Time Table widget was the first widget that surfaced when the project idea came into existence, while poll, survey were very common applications that were not necessarily related to a campus / academic institution's requirement. Campus Placement is a very practical use case and deserves to be built as a standalone application - as a matter of fact could be a SaaS application (Software as a Service) which can benefit Academic Institutions and Companies across India - after a bit of research I figured out that there are already a couple of such companies which offers this application as a service for example
http://ecampusplacement.com/index.html
The Quiz was very similar to Surveys except for the fact that a Quiz required evaluation of the response from individual and declaring a winner while Surveys required aggregation and representation of the result set / data in a particular format.
The students found Lotus Widget Factory to be very unfriendly as the learning curve to understand builders was very steep. Nevertheless, myself and Amit helped them overcome the obstacles with resolutions that we learnt while we mentored them. To some problems they faced we did not have straightforward resolutions and only had workarounds. This is what we do in reality too when it comes implementing projects in real life- when it comes to taking a system to go-live, beyond a certain point we have to get the stakeholders to agree to work arounds and get the system operational...
Monday, August 8, 2011
Moments of pride: IBM University Relations in India bags the Zinnov 2011 Award for Eco-system Contribution
Myself and my colleague Dr. Bhooshan Kelkar who now heads IBM University Relations in India were in Bangalore a couple of weeks ago to discuss the revamp of IBM University Relations Portal . The plan is to extend it to schools and colleges other than engineering.. In general use it for collaboration with any academic institution - not just universities and engineering colleges. The Corporate Citizenship Initiatives will be driving adoption of this portal with schools and non engineering colleges, going forward.
There was another reason why Bhooshan had traveled to Bangalore with me- he accompanied my friend and mentor, Amol Mahamuni to collect the Zinnov Award tha IBM UR bagged for its contribution in building the ecosystem. It was a moment of pride for all of us at UR team when the IBM University Relations bagged the Zinnov 2011 Award for "Eco-system Contribution"... Here's an extract of one of the report
Zinnov Management Consulting Pvt. Ltd, a leading management consulting firm, recently hosted a first-of-its-kind awards ceremony for the MNC R&D Industry in India, to recognize their contribution to the entire R&D ecosystem. Titled, 'Zinnov Awards & Recognition Program 2010', this event brought together important stakeholders from the global R&D community and recognized their contribution thereby facilitating peer-learning.
Award Category: Eco-system Contribution
In the category, 'Eco-system Contribution', IBM bagged the 'Ecosystem (University) Connect & Development Award', while NVIDIA won the 'Accelerated Ecosystem (University) Connect Award'. The two companies were recognized for their significant contribution in developing the R&D ecosystem in India, specifically through collaborations with universities. R&D Centers have realized that in order to deliver value from India it is imperative that they leverage the supporting ecosystem - i.e. Universities, Government, Service Providers and Start ups for the purpose of research.
The various dimensions used by Zinnov to assess MNC R&D centers across their interaction levels with tier-1 and tier-2 universities in India included: Awareness building initiatives at universities - fairs, seminars; Involvement initiatives at universities - curriculum influence, affiliate programs; Support to universities - grants, lab setups; Strategic Research with universities - specific research projects with a monetary value; assessment of whether the research domain is common or niche. Mr. Amol Mahamuni, Program Director IBM India University Relations, received this award on behalf of IBM India.
Three Cheers to "IBM India University Relations"
There was another reason why Bhooshan had traveled to Bangalore with me- he accompanied my friend and mentor, Amol Mahamuni to collect the Zinnov Award tha IBM UR bagged for its contribution in building the ecosystem. It was a moment of pride for all of us at UR team when the IBM University Relations bagged the Zinnov 2011 Award for "Eco-system Contribution"... Here's an extract of one of the report
Zinnov Management Consulting Pvt. Ltd, a leading management consulting firm, recently hosted a first-of-its-kind awards ceremony for the MNC R&D Industry in India, to recognize their contribution to the entire R&D ecosystem. Titled, 'Zinnov Awards & Recognition Program 2010', this event brought together important stakeholders from the global R&D community and recognized their contribution thereby facilitating peer-learning.
Award Category: Eco-system Contribution
In the category, 'Eco-system Contribution', IBM bagged the 'Ecosystem (University) Connect & Development Award', while NVIDIA won the 'Accelerated Ecosystem (University) Connect Award'. The two companies were recognized for their significant contribution in developing the R&D ecosystem in India, specifically through collaborations with universities. R&D Centers have realized that in order to deliver value from India it is imperative that they leverage the supporting ecosystem - i.e. Universities, Government, Service Providers and Start ups for the purpose of research.
The various dimensions used by Zinnov to assess MNC R&D centers across their interaction levels with tier-1 and tier-2 universities in India included: Awareness building initiatives at universities - fairs, seminars; Involvement initiatives at universities - curriculum influence, affiliate programs; Support to universities - grants, lab setups; Strategic Research with universities - specific research projects with a monetary value; assessment of whether the research domain is common or niche. Mr. Amol Mahamuni, Program Director IBM India University Relations, received this award on behalf of IBM India.
Three Cheers to "IBM India University Relations"
What an Idea sirji !!! For the 3G campaign
How is Indian Population going to come down as a result of introduction of 3G - As always amazing campaign idea by Idea Cellular to popularise the adoption of 3G in India...
Amazing content on the website too........ which was recently re-launched. With IBM WebSphere Portal and Web Content Management as the underlying technology..
Hats off to the Idea team who built the campaign, the content and the website !!
Hats off to the Idea team who built the campaign, the content and the website !!
Thursday, August 4, 2011
IBM Collaboration Assessment Tool
Yet another "smart" step from IBM to help enterprises understand, adopt Social Business by providing a tool to assess where they stand against standard industry practices. This is IBM demonstrating its thought leadership yet again, in this space.
http://www-01.ibm.com/software/lotus/collaboration/assessment/
http://www-01.ibm.com/software/lotus/collaboration/assessment/
Friday, July 29, 2011
Innovate 2011 : August 8th - 11th - Software Everywhere
IBM Rational is holding the Innovate Conference for Software Developers and interestingly there's a "Developer Rock Competition" as part of the event. Quite an unusual thing for a "developer conference" to host...
The event is opportunity for developers to
- Get more than 15 hours of studio time and get some music tips from Bangalore's best Rock band, "Thermal & a Quarter".
- Compose and record a song of their own.
- Play the recorded song in front of more than 1000 plus people at Innovate2011.
- There are some cool prizes and awards for the winners.
To know more : http://innovate2011.ocmail2.in/t/r/14921/6178/10/22
The event is opportunity for developers to
- Get more than 15 hours of studio time and get some music tips from Bangalore's best Rock band, "Thermal & a Quarter".
- Compose and record a song of their own.
- Play the recorded song in front of more than 1000 plus people at Innovate2011.
- There are some cool prizes and awards for the winners.
To know more : http://innovate2011.ocmail2.in/t/r/14921/6178/10/22
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