I PUBLISH, THEREFORE I AM

If you are starting a yoga camp, or a self-improvement magazine, where do you find your customers?  ( actually, the genuine customers ) usually your kind of customers don't hang out online on Facebook....they go to the temple, walk in the park, east fruits in the fruit stall, and go to a gym. Now you know why your Facebook campaign and your stall at the nearby mall didn't do that well...Online social media is not a solution for a lot of things, you need to physically be present offline to get social with your potential customers.  I realized this yesterday at the temple. A women came up to me and said "you should attend this camp, you will feel much better, and it is free of cost"...I wasn't looking for such a camp, but I am sure going to try it at least once. And may be, a lot of them at the temple where looking for such a camp. It did not strike me at the temple that it's a good way to promote a yoga camp at the temple; it just happen to strike me now. ...

The P&G chief says  that bosses/leaders micromanage because " they aren't busy enough ". Actually, I felt exactly the same almost two years back, when I was being micromanaged. I used to feel "How on earth do they (bosses) find all day to sit on my head and meddle with what I am doing, don't they have a real job". The point is that leaders need to understand that their job is not only to lead their subordinates, it is also to lead themselves. At times, micromanagement is required, but at times, it's just too irritating. Why do people micromanage in companies: They don't trust their new recruit that much - if you don't trust him that much, why recruit him on the first place. Or, why don't you train him and them put him on the job. The accountability is not pushed further down to lower levels in the organization - If your boss is the only face of the team, then she is accountable for everything in the team; and she has to sit on your he...

I just read the chapter 3 of Book yourself solid   for free. I finished reading it and now I've got a new cool thing to tell you :). If I ask you, what do you do?, you say "I am blah , I work at blah "...I still have no clue of what EXACTLY is that you do. If you really want me to understand what you do, then you need to give me a nice unique introduction that is not just easy to understand, but also gives me a feeling that you love what you do: My introduction : "When you have problems understanding a software functionality, you press F1 to get some help, I write what comes up when you press F1. I am a technical writer." ( To some it might sound fancy, to others it might sound unique ) Now, what is it that you EXACTLY do?  

Who is the head of your family, most probably the MAN in the house. So, the daddy gets to become the head of the family almost always, unless the mommy happens to be Oprah Winfrey or J K Rowling J . In this generation every guy is kidding about how demanding their horrible but a darling wife is, and how they always have to succumb to their wife’s wants...So, who’s your daddy now? I am not kidding, I am seriously asking about who will be the head of the family in this generation. I sense a role change here . Guys will have to make peace with this fact (only those who were looking forward to this role).

You want me to act professional all of a sudden… How will I? all this while I was thinking that I am working in a startup company environment, and now suddenly, you expect me to be an employee at McKinsey. How is that possible, temme? Either you change me gradually to act professional or you train me like a McKinsey employee from the very beginning; now you decide how do you want to roll. If you want me to switch my office vibe type , you gotta give me some time and understand that it’s a gradual process, not an overnight process. Now, if you plan to send me to the client side tomorrow, I’ll automatically be professional coz I know that he IS a customer, but if you want me to act different with my office colleagues from tomorrow, then I am sure to find that change really difficult. One day jeans and then other day a tuxedo. How on earth? Being professional is not the point, the point is that sometimes the overnight change isn’t really possible for as si...

Have you ever done an online research of your product/service the way an online guy looking for your kinda product/service would do? I am sure you have done a bit of research on who is blogging about you/your blog. Whoever blogs about you, irrespective of what they talk about you, is really crucial to your popularity...you mean something to them, that's why they care to write good things or shitty things about you. The same applies to the software product you work for . I was just thinking, if your company needs the best of the best (most passionate) guys to work on your products, why not recruit guys who run a website/blog that talks mostly about your product or your competitor's product?  coz irrespective of what they blog/think of you, the point is that they care to blog about you. PS : I had written something similar on resourcing . I think, if you are an HR, you would want to hire me as an HR for the kind of  untested ideas  I bring in to the HR domain :-).

We Indians care more about English than the native speakers of English – I meant Americans, not the British ;-P. Language is for communication à To make sure everyone means/understands exactly what they speak, we made guidelines à People don’t follow guidelines à It’s for these people that we write documents and emails à  when people don’t understand the so called correct English, why write the so called correct English. PS : I am not really a fan of English Grammar ( you would have known by now ). I follow a lot of guys (in Google reader), and I find that everyone writes their own English and I can understand every bit of it without any problem. So, don’t care about your English, just blog things at one go, people will understand what you are writing (most of the times). PS : Some 5 guys will read my post and say “The author doesn’t write good English”. All I say is that I care more about the other 495 readers .

If you ask your lead - how to do something, she is going to tell you how she would do it, and that you need to follow the same. You probably won’t like it, because that’s her way of getting things done . Everyone has different comfort levels with different kind of tasks , what looks easy to her might not really be easy to you and vice-versa. So, if you want to get things done your own way , then just do it and then ask your lead for suggestions . You’ll see that she is most likely to tell you to go ahead with your idea (may be with some tweaks). In the end, both are happy (you and your work J ). I hope you got my point. Also, I have no problems with my lead  J , she's really good. This post is for guys who keep asking others on how to get things done.

I read this superb  article  and now, I've got a map that takes care of all the possible things that an economy needs to focus on (although, nothing new about it): People need quality jobs - they need good education from a premier institute - premier institutes have great placements -  it's the teachers that make the institute, not the students - teacher's evaluation has nothing to do with teaching - invest on teachers for quality education - teachers need good salaries - retain teachers who like teaching and train them - make teaching one of the most sought after professions . An overhaul in teaching profession is a must to get your kid a quality job.

Lunch hour is for me to fill my tummy coz I am hungry, and then get back to sleep, I mean, work.  Happens!...But, the Energy project is here to change your outlook, I like that fact that lunch break is considered a real break, that you can use to energize yourself, and get back to work more fresh and happy. For more, buy this book  - Writer with a day job . How on earth is lunch break a real break. I am still to figure that out, let me try!...How many of you eat lunch at work and then go back to you desk to continue to work like that's the only thing you wanna do all your life :). PS : I don't know but I think that the book encapsulates 'me', coz I am a writer with a day job :).

for guys who can understand with a simple email. Most of the times, people say “get everything in written, in an email”, and still we manage to conduct so many meetings and so many meeting minutes. Kinda freaky, isn’t it! Watch out.

This is just irresistible for a lot of us; an online campaign where all you have to do is LIKE the website and comment or Re-tweet saying "Why you think you should get the gift". If you own an Indian website and you are looking for subscribers or traffic, then you gotta run such campaigns, it's better than spending $ 1000 on Google AdWords. You'll think, why am I not doing such a thing- read the post script, u'll know. But personally, I think guys like yourstory.in , redbus.in and desimartini.com  should run such campaigns, because everyone likes the kind of service they provide, but not everyone knows where to find them (as in, their website). PS : I too have a good readership at my website ; I see my Google analytic account, and sometimes I average 5000+ page views, why shouldn't I get started...it's because I blog for the love of writing, and there are no monetary returns I am looking at. But yeah, if someone tells me that there are a lot of people o...

I just came to know that apple doesn't own www.ipad.com . So, I went to the website to see how is the owner making use of it to make millions of dollars, and then I was shocked to see that the website is nothing but a wallpaper (If you find the owner, can you smack him for wasting such an awesome opportunity :))...Damn! If I were the owner of www.ipad.com , what looks straight-forward to me is to hire a bunch of engineers or a company to sell only-and-only ipads on the website and make it look like Apple's website :) (plain white). Don't you think the owner of that domain is squatting on one of the hottest domain names; how sad, I don't think he know what he has . Also, I don't think he even needs to think about selling ipads on the website, instead, all he needs to do is approach Apple or Amazon or Ebay , and give them his asking price. I am sure that these companies can give him a few million dollars for such a classy domain name. So, I think, Shakespere was wro...

Just had a discussion on whether the late Sathya Sai Baba is (not was) super natural or not. I am and going to be his devotee forever, but that is besides the fact and there is no reason why I am here to prove a point or debate on why is he super natural (yes! I still think he is super natural). Did he really do miracles, got some idols out of no where and all that magic stuff....I say, leave that behind, I know, you don't believe in all those things...perfectly fine. But, just a thought, do you realize that people all over the world were his followers; you can fool 100s of people or even a city but not the whole country and to that matter the whole world...wait! so what if everyone followed him? do you realize he has the only hospital in this world where there is no accounts department i.e. everything is free, so what? do you realize that he got millions of dollars from foreigners and to drop a few names - The Hard Rock cafe founder gave shares of his cafe to Sai Baba trust, ...

That is it, from now on I am not going to any workshop that teaches me what I already know. How will I know if I already know what they are teaching? If they are hope-mongers, or wise ass guys with no specific agenda in their invite then that workshop is not for me. I've got to stop wasting my time and money on these things. I used to think, I can't miss any of these workshops because there is something I can get out of every workshop, but I was wrong . All we need to do is attend just the few good workshops, we won't miss a thing. I just came from a workshop and I was really frustrated that there was nothing new that I saw in his presentation, not even a single word was enlightening. I am not saying the presentation wasn't good, probably a lot of people were enjoying it and getting something out of it, but not me. The workshops that make sense to me are the once where people narrow down their talk/presentation to just one small aspect , be it entrepreneurship or wri...

Use it when you DON’T need it so that it is useful when you need it. As in, you don’t join Linkedin after you come to know that your company is laying off, coz you won’t understand Linkedin’s language or its communities. But, if you are active on Linkedin and you lost your job, you know where to go, who to approach and which community post to follow for vacancies…you stand a better chance. All in all, desperation doesn’t work in social media . So, use Linkedin not as a placement agency , but as a network/community that allows you to contribute and participate. Superbly said by @Sree , a professor at Columbia university. I’ve attend quite a few social media sessions where people talk about how to grow your followers, how to sell things online, and a lot of other how to sessions, but this session was different and very enlightening, it was less about how to do social media and more about why to do social media. An hour well spent J . ...

It took 2 hours to write the first 2 pages (all my myself), and another 2 hours to write the remaining 20 pages (again, all by myself). I know the work*time math is all screwed up, but that’s how things work when you do everything all by yourself J . If it’s a marathon, don’t worry too much about the first few miles, that’s not your pace.

Did you get a chance to say hi to the big daddy of your company coz I feel there is just something different about these guys.  If at all the C-suite guys of your company are in town, you can't miss the opportunity to just go and say hi, and ask a few questions (if really required). It's a good experience to just see what they do (although, there isn't much you can learn by seeing), but they have a different outlook towards work that might as well change your outlook towards work . If you are in an IT industry, all that you hear in your daily life is features, product delivery, deadline, doc/code updates ...for a change, with C-suite guys taking presentations, you get to hear consulting, benefits, change, revolution, profits, analytic, strategy and all the other fancy words :)...that is what you want to hear every once in a while. And, not to forget, the snacks and the chilled beer. This sure is a crowd puller, no doubt. :)

Good that people still read a newspaper. It's almost been 7-8 months that I read a newspaper the way I used to (for news, that is). Now a days, I kinda scan it if I get some time (I get to do this once in two weeks). I am amazed that there is no news item that I've missed all this while. I think it's because, if it's a news that is worth being ON news, then people tend to discuss it at work...I hear what they say and get the news. Also, online websites broadcast the important news on their homepage, and that doesn't escape me.  This shows that you don't miss anything if you stop reading the newspaper, and ya, I think the newspaper needs a total revamp. I mean, when GOOGLE can change, everyone can change :).

You are not the only one who is damn busy at work, so is everyone else. When you know that you have a lot of work and that you don't have any time for anything else other than work, take a 10 minutes break , then you'd understand that you were wrong about not having anytime :). Everyone has time, it's just that a lot of us don't want to give any time to anything else other than work. This is what I did in my last sprint release, I had too much to deliver by end of day and I had no idea how am I gonna do it, so I took a 10 minute break and everything seemed doable after that :).

Before , it was need that drove us to supermarkets and shops. I need it, discount or no discount, I cannot do without it, so I'll buy it. Now , it is purely availability that makes us swipe our salaries online ;). It's available, it's on discount, I am buying it, but I still don't know why I need it. I got tired of buying stuff online, especially, all kinds of deals and shit I don't need. So, I unsubscribed to all kinds of daily deals website, daily newsletters that just make no sense, linkedin updates, facebook likes, gmail desktop notifications etc. All these things that just distract me for no reason...phew!...so from now on, I if want it, I'll go an get it, it doesn't have to come to my inbox ...as simple as that.

I said "In July, it's like San Francisco in Hyderabad". Why did I say that ? I've never been to San Francisco, and it's just been one year in Hyderabad, it's not like I've known this place for long. You see, that's just an opinion which has a false base :). Also, I've planted wrong ideas in that guy's head and he might plant the same in someone else's head. In the same lines, someone in my office got a call during lunch and he said "I'll come in 15 minutes", that's a lie...it's a team lunch and it doesn't end in 15 minutes, it ends in 15*5 minutes, everyone know's that...that makes it a terrible lie. What I mean is that 90% of the daily chat don't make no sense and they are not even personal opinions, they are just plain lies. Sometime you see a movie and you pick up a catchy line and use it elsewhere ....and sometimes you know it doesn't hurt to lie ...so you do lie intentionally.

Why just customers, as a matter of fact, no one likes to listen to or see things that they already know. The same thing happens when you write a customer specific manual that is exhaustive of all the features in a product, if you know that the audience can pick it up in one line, why should the manual consist of a page . I understand the manual is well written only if it has covered everything, but the point is that the customer doesn’t need it. Sometimes, it’s just not good to give everything to your customer and leave it up to them to figure out what they want, that’s just not efficient. People don’t look forward to all that there is in your product, they just what the feature they are looking for and that’s it. If you are a customer, you must ask your provider to provide only what you are looking for…if you make that explicit, you’ll get exactly what you want and save a lot of time by not looking at what is extra. PS : Documentation and online help files are not discussed here. It...

I think this world will be a better place if people could just ask questions, express opinions, and the heads of the state could just sit and listen...and sometimes, answer a few questions that they can. OBAMA is live on TWITTER to answer you questions: http://askobama.twitter.com/ I know you are the head of the state, you are busy, no not just busy, you are unreachable...but c'mon, how about once in every two weeks you get to this social media website and give real answers to people's questions while sipping a juice in your comfortable couch. It doesn't have to be the super power connecting with the people...it can very well be any guy who is answerable to people's questions: MPs, MLA's, Industrialists, and corporations etc.

Someone said “Why would anybody want to come to tech writing profession of all the professions”; I was like “because they like it” or for any reason to that matter – may be, they did not get any other job or it just happened purely by luck. Well hello! That’s something you can say about every other profession; People, especially in India, don’t choose their profession, they just randomly look for anything that pays them decent. In general, if you have been in a profession for some time, and not a single week has gone past without people in your profession pitying themselves, then that should make you feel good and bad:                 You should feel good coz almost no one sees any opportunity in that field, and they are not here because they like doing what they do; they just want a job, that’s it. So, you don’t have a lot of competition here, do you? ...

It took an earth shattering disaster for couples in Japan to realize that they need to move on. Read more  (TOI Article). You know, a lot of them out there somewhere are living - or made to live - a life they don't want, they just hope that someday everything is going to be fine. Sooner or later, they realize that it's better to pursue someone else than to wait for a miracle :). No offence, but if it ain't working, you gotta move on...it's not a crime (someone always gets hurt), it's just one F***ing life, so, live the way you want :). Also, there is another side to this, a lot of couples will now realize each other's importance much more than they did before (I hope). PS : BTW, It's really sad that Tsunami took so many lives, but that's what happens when nature strikes, we are really helpless in front of it. But, on the other hand, Tsunami actually helped a lot of couples in Japan, didn't it.

I do quiet a lot of UI (User Interface) label reviews at work, I follow the conventions to define a UI label (precisely, I follow whats already there). But, just now, I saw a UI that comes in the google.com home page which is really good for the readers. Come here often? ( Sounds like google is talking to me, isn't it! ) Make Google your homepage. ( I think google just made my decision :) ) I don't think the editors at google follow the conventions, instead, they make new once :). Good going google. If it were me, I would have come up with a boring label: Do you visit www.google.com often? If yes, click Sure to make google your homepage. If no, click No thanks . I sure have learned something cool and new.

Say you screw up at work, and nobody cares to be a critique or nobody even bothers to ask you what’s wrong with you, why don’t you put extra hours, why not take this book and learn from it…and all that. Then it’s clear that people in your office have GIVEN UP on you, you need to find another workplace. A lot of us think that people being hard on them is a bad thing…I mean, don’t you get the point that if a person is being hard on you, then that can also mean that he wants to work things out for you. That’s a good thing, isn’t it. People are hard on you for a reason, and that’s what shows that they still care.