Back to basics

It is the results season. Kids and parents are talking about what they have scored and which college to study next and how much money its going to cost. Lots of courses are talked about. But one thing I am very sure about is no parent or kid is talking about studying philosophy as a course. I am not even sure if BA philosophy is even offered as a degree course in some college. 

We want results and now. Job and immediately after degree. Profit and right after one starts of business. When I read about "First Principles Approach" I just fell in love with that concept. One can say it's a fancy way of saying "Ask Why", which it kind of is.  Nevertheless when we look at the world from a "First Principles" point of view it gives a completely different meaning to even mundane things . Your decisions become much more clear. It also shows how people are completely unable to do simple reasoning on their every day decisions or when they take a political position. Don't get me wrong, this is not hubris. Most people would take a much better decision than me, but I am also certain most people don't have solid reasoning on why they take a particular decision. Social and empirical rules influence our decisions a lot or at least help to get to one quickly. But the problem is that decisions that doesn't have solid reasoning also hampers the society and self in making progress. Irrationality creeps in and costs a lot of money, time, opportunities and creates avoidable problems. I think that's why studying philosophy will train the society to reason right and wrong, ethics and morals, instead of just taking deciding from empirical formulas.

I was extremely glad when I saw the an assignment on Kantian and Utilitarian approaches to ethics in our Information Systems course. I was hoping that we would have detailed discussion. But due to lack of time and probably also due to our aversion of anything philosophy we did not delve into the first principles of ethics of privacy policies of IT companies in our class. I would have enjoyed that session.

I am kind of digressing; it's getting late and you are losing interest. My argument is that we think education and learning is a way to get a job or advance our career or improve the profit as a business. I think it is wrong and counter productive. We need to go back to basics, learn the first principles, and have a philosophical construct. Then one would learn to make better decisions and that will help him/her with better jobs, advance career and help improve profit of their organizations.

I am looking forward to a day when Logic and Categorical imperative is taught in Kindergarten and beyond.

Personality Types

I think it was in 2008. In a two days corporate training program I took the MBTI(Myers-Briggs Type Indicator) test. We had extensive lecture and group work after the test to understand the dichotomies and the personality types. I couldn't recollect now the exact type I classified into. But I do remember that what I got from the test and what I felt about myself pretty much matched except for one dichotomy. The whole program was fun and I vividly remember some of the exercises.

Cut to 2019, in the OB class we had a lecture on Self-Awareness, Social Awareness and as part of that we took the MBTI again. What was striking to me was that this time I have got kind of middle score in three of the dichotomies and in the dichotomy for which the test indicates a strong preference, I think my nature tends to be the other one. Obviously the test has its limitation and I do not think we can bucket so many billion folks into just 16 categories accurately.

But, I do like this exercise. It is a way of looking at and trying to understand self and others. The most important learning though is that personalities are just different types and there is nothing good or bad in itself.  This is applicable for self and for others. So, when dealing with others we can avoid judgements & stereotypes, better understand their point of view and appreciate their contributions.

The actual MBTI test is quite costly, but there are many free equivalent tests. This time I took the one at - http://www.humanmetrics.com/personality

If you want to understand what a given personality type means - check this out https://www.16personalities.com/

Consistency

Being consistent is great quality, evidently the one I lack, especially when it comes to blogging. Though I have not posted for a loooong time, I always wanted to write. I think two things came in between. Having a twitter account(You really don't want to check that out.), it is always tempting to tweet out any thing one wants to say out loud. Once the tweet is out there is no more motivation to write a long post. Second, somewhere in between everything looses their meaning. My old posts look so ridiculous and I am little embarrassed to read them now. 

But hey...didn't we read somewhere that finding the meaning from the meaningless is what the meaning of life(Ok! I just made that up). Also I think ability to laugh at oneself is a gift. So I am going to leave all the old embarrassing posts in all my blogs not deleted. Though some of the draft ones will be surely deleted. They were so bad I did not have heart to publish them at that time itself :)

Thanks to Prof. Viji, I am reviving this blog. I will be posting random stuff in addition to things on my Executive MBA classes at IIT Chennai.

HTML5 : Sencha's Fastbook

When Zuck said HTML5 is not ready yet, many took it as a word of God and turned away from HTML5 to native SDK for mobile application development. Couple of days back Sencha brought the focus back into HTML5 with their new HTML5 based clone of facebook's official app . "So, when Mark Zuckerberg said HTML5 wasn't ready, we took a little offense to the comment." they wrote in their blog The Making of Fastbook: An HTML5 Love Story 

In my opinion both Zuck and Sencha could be right. As Sencha have actually demonstrated, it probably is quite possible to develop responsive applications using HTML5. At the same time it is also true that it depends a lot on the developers skill set. By HTML5 they actually refer to the JavaScript and when trying to develop rich applications using Java Script you end up creating a lot of low level code. On top of it the tooling for HTML5/Java Script is not as mature as it is for say native SDKs or even Adobe Flex/Flash. This makes HTML5 development time consuming and complicated. 

The main stream programming world would  probably prefer native SDKs whenever they can and they have to provide rich experience to users. HTML5 based applications will be the poor cousins and will be the secondary choice. The user experience of HTML5 based applications will be behind native applications.

At the same time, native applications have their own issues like application discovery,  code updates and they are discussed here and here . I think the future is probably in mobile web where web sites(applications) in mobile devices provide an experience similar to native mobile apps. And for that to happen, HTML5 is must.

Markerboard.in An Online Store for White Marker Boards

We are happy to announce that Markerboard.in , an interesting project we have been working on for a customer has gone into beta. It is an online store for buying white marker boards and similar items. It is probably a first of its kind in India :). We have been working on this project for Corporate Concepts based out of Chennai, India. Corporate concepts is a leading manufacturer and distributor of White Marker Boards. They have a big presence in South India. And this online initiative is part of their strategy to reach out markets in North India and abroad.

You may be wondering if this is a viable online business. However, Corporate Concepts and even we are bullish about the possibilities. This is a product needed widely across India by schools, colleges, institutions and even start-up companies. However not many stores could stock this locally because it is not a mass market product. Hence the whole searching and ordering process is time consuming and it happens pretty much over phone. An online store will make it easy for customers to browse through the product catalog easily and order them quickly. Markerboard.in will be offering free shipping across India and wide variety of payment options(Credit Card option is coming soon)

Currently Markerboard.in is in beta and the full launch is expected within a month. Even as an individual, you can check the site out as a white marker board will be a great productivity tool at home or at office. And if you register now, you will get some awesome discounts during the launch and probably will get an invite for the launch party :)

And we are definitely interested in hearing your views and feedback. If you have any please let me know.

Another One

It is a shame that I am keeping this space not updated. Shame on me. I can give excuses like I am busy..blah blah. A busy man is one who finds time for everything. I am a lazy one...That's a criminal mistake.
The economy is in a whole lot of trouble and its the best time to be in a cozy job rather than mucking around crazy thoughts and uncertain things. But I am already in neck deep, and I am going to enjoy this.
We closed last year reasonably OK, but that elusive break through has been just that. And as it is enough(or already late) testing water we are diving head first into deep waters by taking on some wild ideas.
We will keep you posted. We released couple of small android apps[Quizzen and Go! Chennai] into market. We are continuing to work in improving these apps.
Lot more stuff to come keep an eye on this page if you want to see what we are doing. And I too promise to come back here frequently.

Generally speaking....

Once in a while I get reminded of the promise I made to myself that I frequently write in my blog about all things in general and about my start-up life in specific. And then I find some excuse and life goes back to the regular grind. Today actually I am going to write. So first of all, to answer the general ice breaker question....What's up.... I just ask that question to myself. And I think I can answer it either way. Things are awesome and also awful.

I pretty much relocated to Mumbai now and my team is in Chennai. We communicate over the wire a lot. However, it would have been ideal if I am actually co-located with the team. But an all important customer insists that I be present in Mumbai. Will have to wait for some time to see whether its a wise move. In the eternal dilemma of whether to focus on product or service, I chose to focus fully on services now. All the product related works are put aside. I know... I know...Services is a bitch. But after reviewing our situation again and again, it's pretty much clear to me that I have to take-up the services work. For now we are fully loaded and few other projects are in the pipeline. But as expected, the work is going to be extremely demanding on me and on the team. I am hoping to manage to allocate some attention to our forgotten products too.

We have delivered two projects last month. I think we put in our best, and the customer is satisfied to an extend. Of course a long way to go to make them say wow. We have started couple of new projects and this is going to engage us for quite some time in coming months. We have increased the size of our team now and we are looking for Java, Flex, PHP & Mobile Application developers with couple of years or so of experience. If you know any one who is looking for a job and have experience in any of these technologies, let me know. And by the way, we have almost moved to a new office.

Personal life is in a mess and I think I have managed to upset all my family members and especially my wife. Balancing a newly started company and newly started family is no joke. Believe me. Add to that the financial stress.

That's it for now.