My First Blog Post via Posterous

This is a photograph taken in 1925, of the only surviving wagon used in the first train in 1825, then preserved at Darlington works. This and other such photographs adorn the panel of the Deccan Queen on which I am travelling from Mumbai to Pune.

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Posted via email from Mahesh's posterous

Clever By Thirds

Perfection comes at a price. At times so high that by the time you are done paying it you may just barely catch a dying glimpse of your endeavor that did finally end up seeped in perfection. The question is where do you draw the line? Do you draw a line at all? Does the reward justify the effort? Is there a reward at all? Why the hell am I asking all these questions?

If you need perfection, go look at the sunset. If you need to get on this world, go out there and wing it the best you can. Nobody really gives a damn. You gotta do what you gotta do to get what you want to get.

Over and out.

Turning publisher

For those out there who want to look at another great tool for publishing their work and building a community around it try Scribd.

Scribd is a document-sharing website which allows users to post documents of various formats, and embed them into a web page using its iPaper format. Scribd currently has more than 50 million monthly users and more than 50,000 documents are uploaded daily.

I have used it to publish some of my work. You can view some of my work at http://www.scribd.com/maheshpatwardhan

There's a High Tide a-coming !!

Today was High Tide Day in Bombay. Exactly at 2:03 p.m it was to be High Tide reaching 5.05 Metres.

Normally I do not think that too many people pay any attention to the comings and goings of the tides - high, low or otherwise. I suspect a good many are completely oblivious to the fact that such a phenomenon exists. They know that theres a sea out there, a moon and the earth that we stand on - but beyond that I doubt very much that they would have considered that there could be a relationship between these.

But in these last few days we have been so inundated with the news that a big, huge, MONSTER high tide was coming our way that every inhabitant of this great city of ours and his uncle now know that there is more to that sea out there than it lets on.

The local media has had a field day (when do they not have a field day?) Schools were declared shut weeks in advance, some offices worked last Saturday as a precautionary compensatory working day, travel advisories were relayed to potential travellers from far off places, and notices were put up in housing societies advising one and all about the great coming! And no one, unless absolutely essential, was to wander out.

Today arrived and all that was supposed to be done was done. The schools remained shut, the University put off some examinations that were scheduled for the day, roads around the beaches were cordoned off, life-guards were posted at important beach locations, armed guards too. The Media began the countdown to the great event. I watched it on TV. There was a lot of water - the sea usually has a lot of it. There were a lot of people thronging vantage points, there was traffic stopped on the road, and there was the Media all excited about the highest high tide coming in man's recent memory. Some said it was the highest this century, some said it was the highest in a century. Whatever.

I could understand the excitement of the media. Medical science has advanced to an extent where today you can surgically implant it in them. But what puzzled me was the countdown to 2:03 pm - what exactly was supposed to happen at that moment? The way they were going on it almost seemed as if at that precise moment there would be this huge big MONSTER tide thing that would come charging in off the sea and gobble up all the helpless people gawking at all the water around! I guess that explained the armed guards hanging around - to protect against such an eventuality!

Well 2:03 came and went, and I couldnt see any monster. The media guys couldnt either but that didnt stop the excitement in their voices (the implants doing their job). They went on about the exciting spray of water on their faces and some other things I couldnt decipher.

So there you have it. The day of the High Tide in Bombay City. Monster or no monster, one thing was sure - there was major water pouring out of the ears of the people who lived near the water on the beach fronts. And for everyone else, it was the words High Tide !!

Whats beyond Plan B?

Have you ever wondered why there is always only a Plan B?

Why not a Plan C, D, E or more?

Says a lot about the confidence mankind reposes in itself. I will never need more than a plan B. Whatever needs to be taken care of Plan A will handle, if that dont happen, then plan B will see me through. No one, not you, not me, not the fat pig on a farm somewhere on this planet, ever think beyond a Plan B.

Ever wonder why? The why is that we are a very smart, highly intelligent and extremely capable race absolutely able to handle whatever it is we need to handle with the help of at the most two plans. Hence plan A, which most of the time, is all that is required. And sometimes, when in a moment of temporary insanity or acute disorientation we lose our bearings, we need to fall back on plan B.

But thats it. Beyond Plan B, the frontiers of our knowledge end. Beyond that there is nothing. And nothing is something we do not want to have anything to do with. So, there you have it. Plan B is where it all ends. At least as far as we as a collective race seem to know.

Now there may exist a plan C, D or more. If there is, then those who have used them are a very rare breed. Very rare from being either very dead or wandering the other world as some vague astral bodies.And from them there is very little that we will learn.

So, for now, and for some time into the foreseeable future, Plan B is all its going to be. That smart, deep thinking, highly intelligent fallback mechanism used by you, me and those fat pigs on a farm somewhere on this planet.

The Fourth Road To Greatness

"Some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them".

The origin of this quote:

From Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, 1601:

Malvalio:
In my stars I am above thee; but be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon 'em.

 The great Bard wrote these lines when there were maybe a little over sixteen hundred people inhabiting this planet. Hence it was easy to distribute greatness amongst themselves. Well we have come a long way since then and have multiplied as a people many many many times over. Which has led to a fourth category which is: those that were out fishing when the three categories were being distributed and are now surrounded by people who were either born great, achieved greatness or had it thrust upon them.

How do you identify such people? Look for the ones that stand around asking themselves these questions - Am I born great?  Have I achieved greatness?  Have I had greatness thrust upon me? Uh...Um..Er... Strike three - I'm out!!

The Great Ones (irrespective of how they came by it) have always blazed trails through uncharted waters and unexplored territories and trundled down roads less traveled always knowing in some eerie way the 'how' and 'why' of doing it and they seem to be doing just fine. They have relied on their learning brought on by years of experience, inner enlightenment and a vision playing on a plasma screen the size of a small building inside their heads. They have this inner guiding spirit steering them through turbulent waters. For the rest of us there are the "How to..." books.

Considering that more than half of my childhood pals that I grew up with are now well and truly settled in the first bracket, I cant help but come to a shattering conclusion that its a little late in the day for entertaining any hopes of falling into the first category. Another not so shattering conclusion is that I need to consume as many of these books as possible in as less a time as possible. This two-pronged goal at this stage appears no less formidable than a double-barreled shot gun. Pointing at me.

Well. So the next time I walk into a bookstore, instead of browsing through all the delightful sections where I would normally find books that I would acquire and consume with great delight, I would like this time to make my way very purposefully to the sections where all the "books-that-really-matter" are. Now this is a little easier said than done. First, I need to identify said books. And second, of the identified books, I need to select the ones that I can afford to acquire, consume and benefit from. Which is where I start getting woozy.

And this is where you come in. With your vast experience and knowledge, with all the learning of having traveled paths less traveled,  of having navigated choppy waters that defied navigation, and holding high a guiding light that has lit up and shown many the way. If you would be so kind as to shed some of that light my way, I would be grateful, and as a sign of my gratitude help you hold the light up so that you may rest your weary arm as you make your journey through life spreading enlightenment all around! And if that were to appear to be a bit intimidating, then a simple thank you and I would be on my way.

Social Media Ad spend on fast track!

Social Media Marketing is set to show rapid growth, according to a recently published report from Forrester. According to the report, the overall ad spend in the US alone for 2009 will touch 25 Billion USD (which is around 12% of the overall ad spend) and grow to almost 55 Billion USD (21% of overall ad spend) by 2014.

Looking at the components of the interactive ad spend projected for 2009, Search Marketing takes the lion's share with around 15Billion USD, Display Advertising is next with around 8 Billion USD, then comes email marketing with a little over 1 Billion USD, followed by Social Media at around 700 Million USD and mobile marketing at 400 Million USD.

The interesting part of the report is the forecast made for the social media spend growth. It is projected to reach a little over 3 Billion USD, with a CAGR of 34%. Compare this with the growth projected for Search Marketing, which is projected to grow at a rate of 15%.

The two important points of the report are that Search will continue to lead interactive spend followed by display advertising and that owned social media assets (like internal blogs, community sites) are really the only emerging media getting traction in today's economic climate.

OK. So where do we get these numbers for India? The surprising thing is that there is a dearth of authentic numbers and statistics that can be used. My search for this source continues.... and if there be any out there who can shed some light on this, please do so. Thanks in advance.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

As I wandered down these strange lanes....

Wandering down the dark alleyways of Cyberspace it is easy to get caught up and overwhelmed by the sheer amounts of information swirling around. A whopping percentage of which is meaningless tripe, the remaining lays claim to the interesting, the useful, the immensely boring to the wonderfully inspiring. And whatever else I forgot to mention in the previous line. Given the marvelously wet weather outside, I went wandering down such alleyways and what did I see? Of course I was reminded of the "Where have you been my blue-eyed son" line from the 'A Hard Rain's a-gonna fall' song by Bob Dylan and all the wonderful things the blue-eyed boy saw, heard and met when he had been wherever he had been. I didnt see, hear or meet any of those, but I did see, hear and meet some interesting characters.


Like this weird, wacky world of the platypus. This strange looking mammal is a rare kind and is one of five mammals that lays eggs. The males have poison sacs that hold venom for disabling foes, the females secrete milk that collects in pouches which the young lap up. It looks like a beaver with duck's feet and bill - hence also called a duck-billed platypus!


Or this one which explains why Jamaican rum is like scotch. Nice. Actually, doesnt matter if it is like scotch or not. Scotch is nice. Rum is cool. One is fine things in life. The other is life. One has got class and finesse. The other - those and a cut above! And if one is similar to the other, well so much power to them.


Then theres this huge big migration that happens every year on the plains of the Serengeti and the Masai Mara. The migration of the wilderbeest. A phenomenon like no other. Its amazing. They spend part of the year moving from the plains of the Serengeti to the Masai Mara and once having got there make the entire trip all the way back. By which time I guess it would be time to go back again. The great big wandering show!


And wow! - this fascinatingly wondefully wonderful artist whose work one can go on spending hours with. I used to have posters stuck on my walls a long time ago. Those magical loops -defying logic yet perfectly possible. The waterfall, the ever-ascending and ever-descending stairs, the lines of people - its not possible logically yet follow the loops and it all becomes one free flowing uninterrupted loop! M.C. Escher.


And rounding it off - a round of funny umbrellas! Its raining its pouring - so make the most of it and step out with one of these wonderfully innovative creations. Let your soul float up and take a look down at yourself walking around and it should brighten up the bleak day a bit. If you cant find a way to detach, dont worry, the others around you will give you enough looks to convince you that you are standing out in all that gloom.

Who will walk this path? Indian IT and Web 2.0 Strategy Consulting

Theres one question that’s been occupying my mind a lot of late. My interactions with people in the industry and the resulting responses thereof are leading me to it. And the question is this. Are the Indian IT Organizations ready to take on Web 2.0 Strategy Consulting as part of their portfolios?

My short answer to this is No. Giving it a more discussion/debate flavour I would say that I feel that the Indian Corporate sector is still very wary of using Social Media as an Internet channel for marketing, this could be the primary reason that the IT industry is reluctant to get into this area. I feel that this in itself presents a consulting business opportunity.

I have been doing a little bit of asking around and have got some feedback on this.

There is one view that that most 'IT' organisations, regardless of nationality, are very poorly equipped to provide web 2.0/social media strategy consultancy. What is required is a completely different skills set and background experience. The thought that leads from this view is that this is either missing or not being acknowledged in the industry.

There is another view which is similar with the additional input being that what is missing is the ability to think and act from the 'outside in' not just from the 'inside out'. In other words, being 'customer led' and using Marketing as a two-way conversation with your customers; a conversation with your network. Talking 'with' rather than 'at' your customers.

Another quite blunt take is that it is very tricky for a lot of organizations and that it is very difficult to teach an old dog new tricks.

What I strongly feel is that its not because of a lack of skill sets in any organization or that they are poorly equipped to handle consultancy in this area. Its more to do with a mind-set, being able to tune into the whole "relationships" and "conversations" pheonomena and be able to find ways to leverage that. Any IT organization is bound to have the skills and the ability to learn new technologies, so that cannot be an obstacle - its just opening up to the idea that there is a definite business opportunity in this area.

A suggested approach would be to have a 'new dog' working with the 'old dog', someone with a relationship/conversation mindset together with someone with strong IT skills.

We are talking about developing training programmes to try and achieve these 'hybrid' skills, say taking marketing graduates and training them in social media technologies; taking IT graduates and training them in the softer skills necessary for success in web 2.0

Do we have the vision to go down this path? Which are IT companies/Digital agencies that do offer these services at present? Are likely to try developing these “hybrid” skills in the near future?

What is your take on this?

The largest social network – email !!

Which do you think is the largest social network in the world? Take a guess. The answer from the initiated and number followers would be “Facebook”, which has upwards of 200 million active users. Well, it would surprise you to know that that answer may not entirely be correct. What is today the world’s first and largest social network is – Email !

Jeremiah Owyang, the Forrester analyst of social technologies, has a very interesting take on this.

And to be sure, email does qualify as a social network – it has profiles just as social networks (the signatures in email can serve as profiles), they allow you to connect to people and exchange information which become conversations, and of course allow you to share things and collaborate with other groups.

In terms of numbers, just hotmail and yahoo between them have upwards of 650 million active users. The other means of social communication already has made inroads into email – we get notifications of all kinds regarding activities on social media platforms in our inboxes. So email already is part of the social sphere anyways.

More and more email Vendors are foraying into the social space
by adding “Share this” (called Social Pollination) type of features to direct email marketing pieces so friends can share emails with friends in social networks.

So what does the future of Email and Social Networks look like? J. Owyang thinks that they will probably the same. In the next few years, email and social networks will look the same and he expects email vendors like Google, Yahoo Mail, Microsoft Live to envelop the social experience. If you consider Facebook’s news stream or Friendfeed, these are starting to represent simlar content from emails –there is a definite merging happening

Web 2.0: The Framework, Definitions and Technologies

Information overload results in an aching head. Which goes swimming. And battles strange hallucinatory creatures that don’t seem to go away. Is there a way around this? Maybe. But I cant think of any easy way. So embrace it and enjoy the ride.

Let me try and encapsulate information on Web 2.0, the wildly overwhelming beast that has versioned itself beyond its original presence.

The following is sourced from Web 2.0 Framework.

The Framework:

If we divide this up into 3 components: Inputs, Mechanisms and Emergent Outcomes.

The inputs would be:
1. User generated content: which would comprise of Text, Images, Videos, Interactive media, Virtual architecture.
2. Opinions: By way of links, Tagging, Ratings, Social connections
3. Applications: Web applications, widgets

Mechanisms:
1. Technologies: XML, APIs, Ajax, Ruby on Rails etc.
2. Recombination: Mashups, Remixing, Aggregation, Embedding
3. Collaborative Filtering: Ranking, Profile correlation
4. Structures: Folksonomies, Tag clouds, virtual worlds
5. Syndication: RSS

Emergent Outcomes:
1. Most interesting gets most visibility
2. Personalized recommendations
3. Meaningful communities
4. Relevant content that could be easily found
5. Enhanced usability
6. collective intelligence


The Characteristics:

What essentially characterizes Web 2.0 is that it is driven by participation. If you consider the common platforms like blogging, social networks, video and photo sharing sites, you will see that they all exist due to the content that they offer that has been created and shared by the users. Standards play a big part in providing common interfaces for accessing content and applications and this makes for easy integration across various platforms. The applications and content is decentralized. Web 2.0 is decentralized in its architecture, participation, and usage. Distributing applications and content over many computers and systems, rather than maintaining them on centralized systems gives it the power and flexibility that would have been lost if they were to be confined to a single monolithic architecture. The openness and modularity of Web 2.0 contributes to creating a whole that is larger than the sum of its parts. The control that users have over the content they create and share and the ability to create and manage individual identities is a crucial part of the Web 2.0 ecosystem.

The Technologies:

Aggregation which is bringing multiple content sources together into one interface or application.

AJAX: (Asynchronous Javascript and XML) This is a combination of technologies that
enables highly interactive web applications.

API: (Application Programming Interface) This is a defined interface to a computer
application or database that allows access by other applications.

Embedding: Integrating content or an application into a web page, while the
original format is maintained.

Folksonomy: Rich categorization of information that is collectively created by users, through tagging and other actions.

Mashups: Combination of diff erent types of content or data, usually from diff erent sources, to create something new.

Remixing: Extracting and combining samples of content to create a new output. The term was originally used in music but is now also applied to video and other content.

RSS: (Really Simple Syndication) A group of formats to publish (syndicate) content on the internet so that users or applications automatically receive any updates.

Ruby on Rails: An open source web application framework that is frequently used in Web 2.0 website development.

Tag cloud: A visual depiction of tags that have been used to describe a piece of content, with higher frequency tags emphasized to assist content comprehension and navigation.

Tagging: Attaching descriptions to information or content.

Virtual architecture: The creation of avatars (alternative representations of people), buildings, objects, and other artefacts inside virtual spaces.

Widget: Small, portable web application that can be embedded into any web page.

XML: (eXtensible Markup Language) An open standard for describing data, which enables easy exchange of information between applications and organizations

Here comes the rain !!

Once, when I expressed a complete lack of enthusiasm for the first rains that poured down on our heads, a friend had told me that I had no soul. How could you not like the rains - that getting wet in the first shower, that stomping around in the squelchy mud, that splattering of amounts of rain water mixed with what else etc. etc... how could I not like it...? Sad shake of head indicating that a soul challenged soul like me had a bleak future..(as bleak as the surroundings I had muttered to myself then). Well, its simply that... the onset of the monsoon does not exactly send me into raptures cartwheeling with joy through the wading pools forming on every street corner. So that makes me one against the rest of the world. OK. Dont get me wrong, I understand the importance of the need for the timely appearance of said rains. I understand the dire consequences that could follow if they decided to take a vacation on a whim. The absolute threat to the continued existence of man on this planet. And so I convince myself that this is the way that nature intended things to be - and so for the next few months, like I have been doing all these years, I will just put up with the rains, the mud, the squelch, the filth, the traffic jams, the wading pools and all.

Divine Manifestations

"Smash@%$" "%#$Crunch" "@#@Pow !!!"

The online thesaurus has the following synonyms for the verb pulverize : annihilate, crush, decimate, defeat, demolish, destruct, dynamite, flatten, rub out*, ruin, shatter, smash, tear down*, vanquish, vaporize, wax, wreck

Henceforth, a new term will get added to the list: Gilly.

It means to do all of the above. Two times over.

After the Delhi Daredevils - Deccan Chargers IPL semifinal last night, Adam Gilchrist will find himself in the pages of dictionaries and thesauruses everywhere. And comic books will have a new term to add to their "smash@@$", "&%#crunch", and "*&#@pow"'s.

And the Daredevils will be the last ones to argue about it.

Consolidating my online profiles

I stumbled upon this new site that allows you to combine all of your online profiles and contact info into a Business Card 2.0: The site is retaggr.com. You can set up a business card with all your information on it - profile details, contact information and a list of all your online sites where you have a profile and content on. A handy utility. You can check out my business card here.

The Zoozoos

The best thing happening around the IPL TV broadcasts seems to be the vodafone ads. They are simply brilliant. The characters are great. Some of the situations (simple ones but made superb by the characters) are out of this world. I love the laughs. My favourite so far is the crocodile one.... check out the Vodafone Crocodile ZooZoo ad. here.

Where black is the color and none is the number.

The incredible coolness of being.....cool. There's a storm coming. Lookout, you're moving too fast. Give it a rest.

An Encounter

An empty sun hangs over a vast expanse of desert sand.

On the hot sand she sits, cross-legged, with beads around her neck and large rings on her fingers. She stares off into the distance as a fire rages behind her. The heat waves bounce off her hair and slam into me. My eyes hurt from the brilliance in her eyes and the wicked glint from the jewels studding the rings on her fingers. My head pounds as my ears fill with the clanging of loud bells. I sit down across her and my thoughts vaporize. The air suddenly goes cold and the sky turns black. Time freezes as the raging fire is now a blazing splash of bright orange against the black sky. She looks hard into my eyes till she can see the very depths of my soul. I look into her eyes and my mind reels as I race back in time to the dawn of civilization and then back again.

She reaches down and grabs a handful of sand. She runs the sand through her flaming hair.

"Wisdom Persists", she says.

The fire rages with an orange fury as she walks away into the black sky.

Conversation

"An old man came to our house this morning. He had a long white beard."

"What did he want?"

"I dont know. He said he lived very far away and if I wanted I could visit him."

"Where does he stay?"

"On a hill far away."

"Are you going to go there?"

"No."

"Why? Did he say something to you?"

"I asked him why infinity never tired of waiting."

"What did he say?"

"Nothing. He picked out little stars from his long white beard and scattered them on the ground."

"What did you do then?"

"I looked down and saw the little stars changing colors. I noticed I could not see any blue. And I wondered why blue was the most brilliant of all colors."

"Was he saying anything then?"

"No. I asked him what the space between In and Out meant to him."

"Did he answer?"

"No. He just shrugged his shoulders."

"Maybe he didnt know the answer. Did you ask him anything else?"

"Yes. I asked him why blue was the most brilliant of all colors."

"He must have answered that."

"No. He just asked me if I liked fish."

"What did you tell him?"

"I took everything I found inbetween In and Out and placed it in the palm of my hand. I then held out my hand to the old man and asked him to tell me what he saw there."

"Did he see anything there?"

"I dont know. He looked at it for a long time. He then turned his head and pulled his beard. He suddenly stood up and muttered something that I didnt understand and suddenly broke up into a thousand and fifty two pieces. And suddenly they all disappeared."

"What do you think he was trying to say."

"I dont know. I will just have to wait for him to come back and tell me about infinity, the color blue and the space between In and Out which I now will have to keep holding in the palm of my hand."

"What do you want to do now?"

Come, lets go play cricket with the others."

"OK."