A world where all is free
Friday, March 31, 2006
 
Are you one of them?

place of birth?!
Originally uploaded by Ralli.
Was filling a form online.. Found this!

Wednesday, March 29, 2006
 
May be a point

Hawkins
Originally uploaded by Ralli.

A posting (Pictures that are worth a thousand numbers) on this blog describes an interesting anecdote. I was left wondering what common day-to-day situations could benefit from a ppt.

Situation 1: Politics
Apart from the Gettysburg address as mentioned in the above blog (it would certainly be handy if Lincoln distributed copies before his famous speech), perhaps the national constitution should come with a ppt attachment for quick reference. Perhaps even an excel based checklist.

Situation 2: Advertising
The ad world could use ppts to provide one slider summaries. E.g. the famous Hawkins ad (lyrics from here ).

There are of course, situations where this might not be possible e.g. the Swagat Baniyan Ad. While the message is very amenable to bullet points as shown below, I suspect the slide would suffer from lack of adequate content beyond the slide header:

  • (Since) Isme Rua nahin Uthta
  • (Hence) Swagat hi lena chaiye
  • Another example is the Dollar Baniyan ad. In this case, the message would be too obfuscating

  • Jasba Ho Andar
  • To Dikhta hai Bahar

  • Or how about “Yes, Mera Best friend, friendly wash.”

    Situation 3: Weddings and religious events
    These would be a lot easier to follow if priests prepared presentations to let the audience know what section they were going through.

    Situation 4: Medical Prescriptions
    Rather than provide a badly handwritten piece of paper, doctors should provide one sliders in the following format:


    Slide header: [name of illness] as suffered by [name of patient]

  • Summary of Illness

  • Prescription including: Rationale, Dosage, Cross-product Relationship (e.g. refer medicine 4 in case urine turns orange)
  • Footer: Disclaimer
    Annexure: FAQs

    Etc…


    Saturday, March 18, 2006
     
    Phrase for the day
    Goldilocks Economy - Not too hot, not too cold
    Wednesday, March 15, 2006
     
    The Inertia of Expertise
    I have observed on a few occasions that a great deal of knowledge can actually hinder performance. Rahul Dravid realised this in '98 and became the legend he is now by consciously forgetting* some of the classical knowledge that he possessed then. Imagine the Dravid of yesteryears coming in at no. 3 in a one day match chasing 435 for victory.

    I have seen instances of this sort closer to home, too. The virtuoso pianist who was never to be found for practice for PAF** is an example. I quite see his point, for the rest of the team was probably so substandard that he would necessarily cringe at the final output. I am sure you don't, as a star, feel particularly appreciated when an uneducated audience goes wild at the end of an average performance. Perhaps this is the expert's dilemma.

    This is obviously a challenge when a team is working to achieve a certain result, which does not quite require an elegant solution but a quick dirty one. How do you handle such a situation? Do you take the expert aside and request him to forgive the inadequacies of the team but to not lose the bigger picture? How do you deal with the bad blood and stress that the rest of the team suddenly finds itself in because the expert is refusing to contribute as the information available or the timelines are unrealistic? Do you do away with the expert unless he mends his ways?

    *Forgetting here is to be interpreted as ignoring elegance based on context.
    **PAF - The Wikipedia article is truly a stub. Request all impacted participants to contribute and improve the quality.
    Friday, March 10, 2006
     
    Pret-a-Manager
    Stumbled across the following website..........................

    Now, "The Portal has been conceived and launched by ** who is an Engineer from IIT Delhi and MBA from IIM Ahmedabad with vast Senior Management experience with reputed.." blah blah blah.

    What caught my eye, though, was the following comment on the site -

    "During his career, he has interacted with over 1,00,000 professionals at all Management Levels."

    Now, the site does not mention which year he started his career (though I did not scan the site in detail), but I could not resist trying to calculate how voracious an interacter he is -

    Assuming he has 30 years of experience, he has at an average interacted with (more than) 3448 new managers (professionals at all management levels) every year.

    i.e. 9.447 new managers every day of the last 30 years assuming he has met new people every single day.

    i.e. 1 new manager every hour of every single day of the last 30 days assuming he was met people for 10 hours every single day.

    Hats off to you, sir!

    I have also heard a similar story of a person who has apparently taken 15,000 flights in his lifetime. In this case I know for a fact that he is in his early 30s. That makes it 500 flights every year.

    Hmm.

    An Interesting Article here.

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