Here is a collection of some shots I took on a recent trip to Washington DC. Instead of using a standard Flickr slideshow embed, trying out the Cooliris wall…check it out in full screen mode 
Most gyms have ’tissue wipes’ for wiping the treadmill / elliptical trainer clean after you are done using them.
Most people don’t bother using them and usually walk off.
Today, the guy on the elliptical finished a few minutes before me and was pottering around as his wife was still on the treadmill. He had ofcourse not bothered to wipe it clean.
After I was done, I wiped up my elliptical and moved to the weights area. The guy had seen me doing it, and i was wondering what he would do next.
Surprise !! He got some wipes and wiped his machine. He obviously was not a regular ‘wiper’ because it was already a good ten minutes since he had finished so I assume he did it because he saw me doing it.
I guess most folks dont do the ‘right’ stuff because either they are too lazy about it or it just doesnt strike them…(another example which is very aptly explained in this awesome ad here.)
So if you want some things to change, lead by example
What is the Peter Principle ?
Its basic thesis is that workers in an organization are promoted to their highest level of competence, after which they become incompetent, thus resulting in work being done by those who are yet to reach their level of incompetence. More about it here
Just realizing how true it is !
The larger a company gets, the more the problem get exacerbated…
How do you motivate such employees ?
How do you ensure they are productive ?
How do you ensure that they dont mess up the people below them ?
Most importantly,how do you find the “Peter’s” in your company ?
While there maybe no simple answers for a company, as an individual, its important to understand and be self aware, to constantly evaluate if you have already turned into ‘Peter’…or are on your way to becoming a ‘Peter’…
Coz if you have, its time to hit the road
On a recent trip to the Surajkund mela, was wondering what to shoot when i realised that there was a whole riot of colours all around us.
Now while B&W photography is considered “classic, timeless, arty, etc etc”, i just love the amount of colour all around us, hence this attempt to capture the ‘colour’
Take a look at some more on Flickr here.
To see a slideshow, click the image below.
The Donkey and the Dog- Read and think-You may find one in your midst.
There was once a washer man who had a donkey and a dog. One night when the whole world was sleeping, a thief broke into the house, the washer man was fast asleep too but the donkey and the dog were awake. The dog decided not to bark since the master did not take good care of him and wanted to teach him a lesson.
The donkey got worried and said to the dog that if he doesn’t bark, the donkey will have to do something himself. The dog did not change his mind and the donkey started braying loudly.
Hearing the donkey bray, the thief ran away, the master woke up and started beating the donkey for braying in the middle of the night for no reason.
Moral of the story ” One must not engage in duties other than his own”
Now take a new look at the same story…
The washer man was a well educated man from a premier management institute. He had the fundas of looking at the bigger picture and thinking out of the box. He was convinced that there must be some reason for the donkey to bray in the night.. He walked outside a little and did some fact finding, applied a bottom up approach, figured out from the ground realities that there was a thief who broke in and the donkey only wanted to alert him about it. Looking at the donkey’s extra initiative and going beyond the call of the duty, he rewarded him with lot of hay and other perks and became his favorite pet.
The dog’s life didn’t change much, except that now the donkey was more motivated in doing the dog’s duties as well. In the annual appraisal the dog managed “ME” (Met Expectations) .
Soon the dog realized that the donkey is taking care of his duties and he can enjoy his life sleeping and lazing around.
The donkey was rated as ” star performer”. The donkey had to live up to his already high performance standards.
Soon he was over burdened with work and always under pressure and now is looking for a NEW JOB …
Source: Internet fwd via Neetu Mishra
The tagline says, ” You will never look at dinner the same way”.
And after watching the movie, I did indeed have a different perspective on the food we eat.
Its amazing the changes that have taken place in the food industry…and slightly scary too…The movie covers a wide range of issues, ranging from the need to buy locally grown organic food, the ‘factory model’ of farming and meat production, to the global impact which major food corporations have had on the environment…
Highly recommended for watching.
Here is the official website. And if you want to do more, click here.
I recently drove down from Gurgaon to Noida to meet a friend. The round trip took me almost 3 and a half hours and provided a fascinating melange that India has morphed into.
Right from cruising at 100 kmph on the NH 8 to waiting for 10 minutes in the ‘tag’ lane at the Gurgaon toll bridge, to battling errant drivers on Delhi’s inner ring road, and smoothly gliding past the tolls at the DND tolls, I had this constant question on my mind, “What’s the rush, people ?”
The answer was quite blatantly on display, pretty much every where.
India is on a roll. India is the next economic super power. Lifestyles are changing (and upwardly so). Women’s empowerment is on a high (as evidenced by higher divorce rates and nasty female drivers on the road – Earlier, it was only the ‘macho men’ who would cut you off ), etc etc
There seems to be an optimism in the air. The Great Recession has taken down America and Europe while India has remained largely unaffected and is steadily growing and ‘developing’. Just the perfect place to be, don’t you think ?
We still have a long way to go. The roads are in a mess, the air quality in Gurgaon sucks, people are generally rude everywhere and everybody is intent on building their own sheltered cocoon – the rest of the world be damned.
While ruminating on the state of things with a friend, she was of the view that things wont improve unless the government improves things.
Take for example, the toll gate at the entrance of NH 8 in Gurgaon. Its horrible at any point of the day and during peak hours is a downright nightmare. While there are special ‘tagged’ lanes for folks with pre paid smart cards the lanes are usually jammed with ‘cash payers’ defeating the purpose of having a faster lane. While the govt could have put in place a system of checks and fines, ultimately, it is us, the people who dont respect the system and then later cry that it doesnt work.
Something needs to change. A change in the fundamental mindset which includes basic civic sense, respect for your fellow man and a sense of ownership in our country. Most of us are hardened ‘cynics’ and believe that its somebody else’s problem(usually the government) to fix it.
So how do we bring about that change to create an empowered India. The answer to some extent may very well lie in this movie, ‘Stand and Deliver’.
Its about taking a small group and bringing about incremental change, one day at a time, and preferably with children.
The adults of our country are already in a mess. The only hope left is with our children, and if we dont teach them what is right from wrong, or more importantly, how to figure out what is the right thing to do…well i guess life will go on as usual.
As MG said, be the change you want to see in the world. Or atleast give it a try.
Yep, The South Asian International Film, now in its 6th year opens on the 28th of October with the world premiere of Aladin, starring Amitabh Bachchan.
It boasts of an eceletic collection of films from directors in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and England.
While there are indie commercials and comedy capers like Fatso and Raat Gayi baat gayi from the Pritish Nandy stable, there are also shorts and documentaries covering a wide range of subjects including Kashmir, the innocence of children, social awakening in rural india and parental pressures in America.
See the entire line up here.
So if you love films and are in New York City from the 28th of October till the 3rd of November, drop in for a dekko.
For more details, go to www.saiff.org
Updates on : http://twitter.com/southasianfilms
Community at: http://www.facebook.com/southasianfilms
P.S: I am volunteer at SAIFF, helping them with their Digital Marketing campaingn, so please help spread the word
Sometime in late August, Sramana Mitra had posted a special offer for Venturewoods’ readers. The deal was that the first 10 users interested in reviewing her latest book would receive a free copy. Free stuff is always nice, but alas, I wasnt one of the lucky few on her list.
Which is why, it was a pleasant surprise when I received a copy of her book Bootstrapping: Weapon Of Mass Reconstruction, a few weeks ago in the mail from her PR agent. Its volume 2 of her Enterpreneur Journeys series.
This review is long overdue and here it is.
Bootstrapping:WMR is a slim volume which primarily contains interviews with 13 enterpreneurs (almost all related to the internet industry) who started on their own, and how they bootstrapped their way to success, before reaching out to VC’s for venture capital.
My initial impression as I started reading this was, that this books seems pretty similar to what the guys at Road Trip Nation have been trying to do.
If you are a reader of Sramana’s blog, you will know that she is a great proponent of entrepreneurship and bootstrapping as a way to get your venture out of the door (rather than banging on VC’s doors)…Infact, in the beginning of this book, she also outlines that ‘mom-n-pop’ enterpreneurship is one of the ways to get the US economy back on track and even exhorts Barack Obama to do more than pay lip service to the SME sector.
However, WMR is pretty different from RTN even though both have stories about people who followed their ‘passion’.
While RTN talks to people across all sectors (and not necessarily entrepreneurs) who believed in their gut and carved their own road rather than doing the ‘doctor-lawyer-banker’ routine, Sramana walks a different line.
Her interviews are exclusively with enterpreneurs AND who bootstrapped their ventures. The interviews are pretty detailed and provide good insights into how various folks started their business (their initial struggles – the perseverance- and how one becomes an overnight success through 10 years of hardwork, etc etc)… I follow Om Malik and Rafat Ali‘s blogs so it was very interesting to read their stories.
A very decent read overall, and I loved the last few lines in the book,
” We are nothing. We are insignificant. We are a single speck of dust in the continuum of time.
So why be afraid of failure ? “
So if you are budding enterpreneur, or even planning to become one, it will do you good to grab a copy.
What was slightly disappointing, or rather what i was expecting in the book was more of her original insights, but I guess the intention of the book was slightly different, and we anyway have her blog for that
Another small niggling point was the design of the book. All her 3 volume covers seem to have the ‘open palms’ pic, which is also the same as her blog mast head. Not sure if this was a branding strategy but the book cover design could definitely have been improved.
I know they say, one should not judge a book by its cover, but I am one of those folks to whom the cover of the book makes a difference. A couple of years ago, i had picked up ‘Shantaram‘ solely based on its cover design, and its one of the best books I have ever read
Was recently doing some research on ‘How to file an RTI application’.
I was vaguely aware of the RTI Act and how it had been enacted to bring about transparency and efficiency within our government machinery, etc etc..
Its been almost 5 years since the act has been in force so I thought it would be a breeze for me to file an application…online !!
But no, our great government, with all its great intentions has still not developed a system where you can file an application online.You gotta do it the old fashioned way…’write down the application on a piece of paper and send it off to the Post office along with a fee of Rs 10′.
Can you imagine how many people do NOT file an application because of the ‘physical hassle’…
How difficult is it to have a system which could allow you to file an application online ?
But wait, maybe its by design and in order to discourage ‘frivolous’ applications (It will be easier to file online so more ppl will file applications which means more work for our babus)… Who knows ?
While the Act is great in spirit, it needs to be accessible much more easily (i.e for starters, the ability to file an application online)
Any takers for building such a system ? More importantly, if a private entrepreneur were to attempt building something, would the government allow it to flourish or throw a wrench in the works ??
Guess the only way to find out is to try and build something like that 
Here is a good place to find what has been happening wrt to the Act since 2005. Somebody call Vishal has been religiously updating the blog
And its not all bad too.. Here is a list of some of the success stories…
