Frames of Mind, 2007

"Bangalore Photography Club" is hosting its second annual photography exhibition "Frames of Mind", 2007.

This year Frames of Mind- 07 offers an exciting platter of breathtaking photographic works from professional and hobby photographers, including some of my pictures. It's a presentation of emotions and passions captured & frozen in frames.

A unique feature of this annual exhibition is that various photographers both Professional and Hobby photographers will be displaying their works on diverse themes.

The Club through this event wants to promote photography as a creative hobby and a getaway from one's stress filled life style and also create a platform for amateurs and hobby photographers to display their work, which would otherwise not be possible individually.

Exhibition this year is scheduled between 8th, 9th and 10th June 2007, at

Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan (near Chalukya Hotel) Race Course Road, Bangalore-560 001.

The exhibition will be open from 10 am - to 7 pm.

Exhibition will be inaugurated by Mr. N. Achuta Rao Commissioner of Police - Bangalore at 11:30 am on 8th June 2007.

Also, as part of the exhibition we will be holding work shops on saturday 4:00 pm & on sunday 12:00 pm by eminent photographers on basic & advanced techniques.

On Behalf of the club I cordially invite you for our second annual photography exhibition.
For Further information please visit our website www.bangalorephotographyclub.com

Analytics Seminar....

Am awaiting the B2K SAS Seminar on the weekend. Have worked for long hours to put in place a lot of data for this seminar, and assisted the Prof for his analysis. Should be a good experience....Here's what is in store:

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B2K in collaboration with SAS and IIIT B, is organizing a 2 day workshop on Data Mining & Business Analytics.

The workshop is scheduled for 27th - 28th May 05 and is being held at the IIIT B campus, electronic city, phase I. This workshop aimed at the three industry verticals of Financial Services, Retail & BPO, consists of a 1/2 day Analytical Briefing and a 1 1/2 day Hands-on Training.

Eminent panelists include Dr.RB Barman, Executive Director, Reserve Bank of India; Mr.Saumitra Chaudhuri, Economic Advisor & Research Coordinator, ICRA & Member of Economic Advisory Council to PM; Dr.SS Satchidananda, Research Director - CBIT, IIIT B; Professor Choudur K. Lakshminarayan and Mr. Vivek Kulkarni.

The Workshop will stress on the uses and benefits of Data Mining & Business Analytics and would introduce the SAS Enterprise Intelligent Platform.

Corroborating the importance of good writing skills...

My 2 cents on why it is important to develop good writing skills over your career...

Proceeding from the commonly accepted norm that good communication is a good skill to have,
very few of us do little to sustain a conscious effort in improving this skill.

For example, would Linux have succeeded if Linus Torvalds hadn't evangelized it? As brilliant a hacker as he is, it was Linus's ability to convey his ideas in written English via email and mailing lists that made Linux attract a worldwide brigade of volunteers.
Have you heard of the latest fad, Extreme Programming? Well, without getting into what I think about XP, the reason you've heard of it is because it is being promoted by people who are very gifted writers and speakers.

Even on the small scale, when you look at any programming organization, the programmers with the most power and influence are the ones who can write and speak in English clearly, convincingly, and comfortably. Also it helps to be tall, but you can't do anything about that ;)

As Joel says, The difference between a tolerable programmer and a great programmer is not how many programming languages they know, and it's not whether they prefer Python or Java. It's whether they can communicate their ideas. By persuading other people, they get leverage. By writing clear comments and technical specs, they let other programmers understand their code, which means other programmers can use and work with their code instead of rewriting it. Absent this, their code is worthless. By writing clear technical documentation for end users, they allow people to figure out what their code is supposed to do, which is the only way those users can see the value in their code. There's a lot of wonderful, useful code buried on sourceforge somewhere that nobody uses because it was created by programmers who don't write very well (or don't write at all), and so nobody knows what they've done and their brilliant code languishes.

If you can write well, wherever you get hired, you'll soon find that you're getting asked to write the specifications and that means you're already leveraging your influence and getting noticed by management.

There are a quite a few thousand garage game developers who write games for the PC and the mobiles by the hundreds in a year, and sell them to game resellers by the dozen and make a killing. But they're still garage developers. They dont think big. Bill Gates had a bigger vision. Why dont they think of having everyone in the world to play their game at least once?

If you're still studying, look for the classes which are "writing intensive," meaning, you have to write an awful lot to pass them. Look for those classes and take them! Seek out classes in any field that have weekly or daily written assignments.

The best things about the effort to read and write well is that it helps you form an opinion on things that you never knew about.
It helps you appreciate the nuances of the different writing styles of different people, and understand what differenciates mundane text book style of writing from someone who's able to convince a reader subtly and make an impression at a sub-conscious level. Moreover, dont ask what it does to your creative energy and the range of ideas you can come out with. I, for example, started with asking, why the Indian voting machines do not come with a 'None' button. But the one that takes the cake is that it automatically improves your verbal communication and negotiating skills as well.

Start a journal or weblog. Write what you feel strongly about. Write about your ideas, even if it's about what you think the corner store near your office can do to subvert efforts from the sharks to throw them out of business. Write about what your company can do to save costs, be it about the paper in the photocopying machine.

The more you write, the easier it will be, and the easier it is to write, the more you'll write, in a virtuous circle. The more you keep writing and the more successful you are in that sustained effort, some day someone small will notice you and take a stand either on your side or the highway! Either way, you've made a mark. You've scored your first goal. Now, go celebrate!

Each one develops an area of comfort, what many refer to as 'getting into their zone'. Figure out what yours is, and keep writing about issues related to your zone. The next logical step is to market yourself in various ways to journals and magazines which deal in that area. Who knows, it may be a start to a monthly article from the 'Fish Guru'. Then, your scope of influence and your audience increase like a geometric progression.

Enough said, try your first article, and expect it to be shabby, grammatically incorrect, illogical and incoherent to an onlooker. The key here then is to understand your objective and your audience and edit, edit and edit.

Whoever said 2 cents cant get you anything these days! ;>)

Cheers.....

Note: Content in some parts above and inspiration in whole borrowed from Joel Spolsky.

DIY Science....

I created another blog, called DIY Science. It's been a long standing wish to help foster a practical approach to discovering nature and the science behind it all, in primary education.

Just as a glimpse, imagine a place where you could practically try experiments, recreate something again, learn to appreciate the beauty of design, and much more...

I intend to collate a lot of valuable resources on this topic, hopefully get a lot of people to contribute their two cents, literally and otherwise, and be able to build a place where the discerning kids could just 'try'.

I havent really given the modalities a deep thought, but hey, it's atleast a start, that'll help prod myself to do more.

More on this blog soon...

My first article in Print...

My first article in print.....has been published in a magazine called Businessgyan, exclusively on pages 45 and 46.
(About BusinessGyan)

I called it "The CRM Backoffice Story".

Hopefully this will spur me on to write more on a variety of topics that are dear to me. Watch this space for more.

And yeah, feel free to post your comments on this post/article :)

Here's the story I wrote...
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The CRM BackOffice Story…

Today’s CRM systems have a long way transitioning from just being a database to an intelligent Decision Support System. Here are a few views in this era of an ever increasing share of electronic support.

To ensure a high customer satisfaction, customer service departments perform a lot of analysis that forms the basis of day to day operational decisions. Unfortunately most CRM tools starting from those that cater to the middle level to even the enterprise level CRM installations lack the capability to provide the basic functionality for analyses.

Now, let me quote a few examples of what the CRM tool can easily be programmed to do, rather than users having to export raw data and trying to get the desired results using Excel.

First, there isn’t one CRM tool I can think of, that has an outlook on Quality.

Imagine the benefits if:

a. The tool had the capability to generate a random list of cases that need to be audited.
This will ensure a truly random sample representative of the whole volume, given an acceptable margin of error.

This way, even if the company had to outsource support to another vendor, they’re one step ahead in making sure that the quality indicators are representative of the overall service quality.
b. The feedback on cases audited is integrated with the case history.
Imagine how easier tracking progress of an agent this would make, not to mention, the ease of training new recruits on mock incidents.

Here’s another perspective, that of the Operations Team. Given the premise that more the real time analyses the tool can provide, the better the managers can have control over overall quality of service.

Provide basic analyses and data points such as:

1. Incoming volume trends
a. This unfortunately has been the forte of the phone based suites, but not of the e-mail management suites.

2. Average response time of all cases

3. Average minutes taken per resolved case, by a specific agent and the team as a whole.

All these would be small steps towards moving to an intelligent system that can achieve measurability against an SLA.

Yes, some companies have taken concerted steps to ensure the tool becomes quality and operations aware, but at an enormous cost of engaging professional services; all ending up in a custom, one time installation.

Having a fluid toolset that can be configured to capture and provide basic analyses followed by providing users with in built templates they can choose from, is by far the best solution.

Most CRM Tool Product teams need to do more in-depth on-site research rather than only talking to execs whose priorities rarely allow them to do justice to the effort and time this requires. They’re better off with feedback from the middle management level, and then align them with the feedback of the execs.

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are that of the author and not that of the magazine. Any of the above content does not intend to tarnish any party directly or indirectly and is just an opinion. No damage is intended to any company or party whatsoever. The author shall not be liable for any penalty or claim whatsoever.
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