A message from Captain Planet (aka Saurabh Arora) showing the effect of global warming and how we can take small steps everyday to avoid further worsening the situation.
There is something very powerful about online education (eLearning). Assuming that one can create really good courses, it enables any individual to start competing with the large Universities. (Many Universities have seen the benefit of online education and they have certainly started offering their courses online.) Students can be located anywhere around the world and they can learn things at their own pace. With social media one can even achieve a very high collaboration between the students (peers) and teachers. This can scale very well and since the class capacity is infinite, we can completely remove the barrier to entry. Finally education can be made very affordable, since the cost of running an online course is extremely low compared to the bureaucratic Universities. Thus it helps in “Bringing quality education to everyone“.
One of the real problems we run into with this approach is, how do you “certify” the student? Coz these individual educators won’t have the credibility like a University nor will they be able to give an acceptable degree/certificate as a “proof of learning”. The question is can social media/web fill the void?
The Social Media/Web is still at a very nascent stage, evolving rapidly. Today people don’t really use it to validate someone’s credibility online. As of today “Certificates” have more value.
To think about it, Open Source (being a committer/contributor on an open source project) helps you build social credibility. This model has certainly worked for a lot of developers.
Imagine “real” people on the web can vouch for your experience, knowledge and skill. You can demonstrate the same with applications/tools you’ve built. Your social status speaks for you and you can completely do away with the traditional certification model. I certainly see us moving in that direction. Decentralize and distribute the ability to certify people.
I was just looking through the Google Analytics on my blog, I was surprised to see Firefox dominate the browser usage race. Also surprised to see how fast Google Chrome has penetrated the market. (Over the years, Firefox has got really fat and slow. Chrome’s launch timing was perfect. Just when many geeks could not take FF’s speed and instability anymore.)
Yesterday, my blog had 3,697 visits from 16 different browsers.
And if you see the break up by Operating Systems
This data matches that from w3schools’ Browser Stats, except that my blog is not very IE friendly hence less IE traffic. Also I hope Windows usage goes down…
”Take the stairs instead of the escalator or elevator and feel better” is something we often hear or read in the Sunday papers. Few people actually follow that advice. Can we get more people to take the stairs over the escalator by making it fun to do? See the results here:
As you might already know, from 1st Oct 09, I’ve joined Industrial Logic full time. I’ll be based out of Mumbai.
Over the last two years, I’ve done various training and consulting gigs (part-time) for IL. Now we feel we can take this relationship to the next level.
My primary responsibilities at IL would be:
Setting up a small office in Mumbai (1-2 Biz Dev/wizardsMarketing Wizards + 2-4 Developers + 1 UX Designer)
Contribute content on diverse topics to Greatest Hits, IL’s elarning product
Help build the elearning platform (in near future, hire some kick ass developers to join this initiative)
Continue handling in-person training and consulting in Asia (in near future, build a small team to help out)
Help position IL and Greatest Hits in Asia (marketing elearning to working out an INR pricing, etc)
Continue building a thriving community of craftspersons in India (and globally)
Globally, continue pushing the envelope on true agility and bringing unconventional ideas to software development.
Would it not be great to get paid to learn new stuff? Unfortunately, we all get lots of offers where we know (at least have this feeling) that either I can earn a lot or I can learn a lot. Somehow its very difficult (not impossible) to have both (earn and learn).
Some people think, traffic lights is THE ONLY way to control and regulate (manage) traffic flow.
For others, esp. those who have seen round-abouts or circles in European countries, know that in some cases round-abouts are a much superior alternative to traffic lights.
And some people who drive on Indian roads know that the first 2 methods don’t really work and they have a chaotic, completely unpredictable, yet self-regulating traffic system.
All 3 are valid ways to manage traffic under the given circumstances. Possibly there are other traffic control systems that I’m not aware of.
Most often I find people introducing all forms of accidental complexity and screwing up their projects. Over the years I’ve learnt some powerful ways to kill a project/organization.
Mediocracy over Innovation and Excellence
Indifference (I don’t care) over Passion and Pride
Sloppiness over Craftsmanship and Self-Discipline
are some of the most common values. And there are many ways to encourage them:
throwing more people at a problem
no visible value system
treating your employees as dispensable resources
punishing failures and ignoring achievements
create more and more specialized roles on a project. (Architects, Designer, Java Developers, Database Developers, UI Developers, DBAs, Manual Testers, Automation Testers, Regression Testers, Performance Testers, Graphics Designers, Web Designers, User Experience Expert, Domain Expert, Business Analyst, Subject Matter expert, System Analyst, Technical Writers, Project Managers, Program Managers, Module Leads, Tech Leads, Configuration Manager, Build Monkey, Product Owner, Scrum Master, Consultants etc)
build all the possible frameworks which might ever be needed before building an application
try to build a very generic solution which is infinitely scale and extensible. (does not matter if you are building a hospital management system, it needs to be generic enough that tomorrow if the business decides to get into hotel management they can use the same).
use the greatest and latest technology buzz words, frameworks and concepts
death by process and meetings
failures and slippages results in more process addition and stronger & strict process adherence and evaluation
