The Mismatch Problem

I was watching this video of Malcolm Gladwell’s talk over the weekend and enjoyed every minute of it.  Malcolm has the uncanny ability to look at problems in new ways. He was talking about the challenges in finding the right people to hire in various professions. He calls it the “mismatch problem”   According to Malcolm, the problem exists because:

1. Our desire for certainty in a world where uncertainty is the norm
2. The growing complexity of every profession increases mismatch

He points out, how, in various fields from sports to teaching, metrics used to select candidates do not really reflect the reality of the changing requirements of the job.

In software we do the same. We try to measure some of the basic skills like knowledge of software development including programming, conceptual understanding, ability to solve simple problems. The true attributes, however, are more complex and are not easy to measure in a test or in a few interviews. These include the ability to work in a team, ability to learn and communicate, a healthy curiosity and a certain amount of pride in work. Our challenge is to figure out how to train our employees in these  new skills.

LinkLog: Internet - A Resource for Going Green

From Why Internet is an Innovation - our Best Resource for Going Green by Courtney Webster

As an entirely online resource, the Internet can be used to share information across the world, without ever having to waste natural resources. Online bank statements reduce corporate mailings, while websites like www.photobucket.com allow us to share our pictures without making eco-costly prints. When shopping online, using credit cards and online order confirmation, we save the paper and ink that would other wise be used to print cash and receipts, and without making the trip to the store, we’re reducing our carbon footprint in the process.

There are several businesses that can do this, especially ones with mostly knowledge workers. Courtney points out Project Nvokh, a fascinating effort in going green.

Technology Trends Talk at TiE Chennai

I gave a talk on Technology Trends and Gleaning Opportunities at TiE Chennai today. It was gratifying to hang out with the participants and swap stories. I just uploaded a copy of the presentation (in PDF format). Here is the link -  technology-trends-jun2008

I also uploaded a copy on slide-share. Here is the link to the presentation.

I would love to hear from you. I am going to keep updating this presentation and incorporate suggestions. I am also planning to spend some time expand my list as well as tools for tracking trends.

Resources: 7 Things You Should Know About

This is one of the most useful resources I found yesterday. It is called Seven Things You Should Know About from Educause Learning Initiative. From their page:

7 Things You Should Know About…pieces provide quick, no-jargon overviews of emerging technologies and related practices that have demonstrated or may demonstrate positive learning impacts. Any time you need to explain a new learning technology or practice quickly and clearly

They cover a variety of emerging technology topics.  For each topic, they describe:

1. What is it?
2. Who is doing it?
3. How does it work?
4. Why is it significant?
5. What are the downsides?
6. Where is it going?
7. What are the implications of teaching and learning?

These questions (and the description) provides a much better overall perspectives of the topics covered. The coverage is non-technical and is a great way for any one curious about the topic to get a useful overview.

I like this format so much, that I plan to create a template and use it for our learning wiki.

Why, How and Why Not?

As children, we are always questioning people. As we grow older, we question less and less and accept more.  Corinne Miller, suggests that this may be because of the perception that asking questions is a sign weakness and describes how we can change this.

“What’s your favorite question? Over the years we’ve found that the most popular answers to this question are ‘why,’ ‘how,’ and ‘why not’ in that order. A trend we’ve also observed is that those who ask ‘why’ are typically more holistic or whole-brained thinkers, those who ask ‘how’ are typically more box thinkers, and those who ask ‘why not’ are typically the challenging thinkers. All types, of course, are equally valuable and equally required for innovation!”

Questions stimulate the brain! Questions use verbs and words that activate key areas of the brain that, in turn, increase the volume and variety of questions. The more questions, the more creativity and innovation. We like to say that questions open the innovation pipeline.

This article questions why people do not question and suggest ways of changing this.

• Why as you become older, we question less and less?
• How do we build questioning into a part of  business culture?
• Four steps in developing question banks - identifying, collecting, organizing and refining

One of the habits I am trying to develop among our interns and students is to keep a log of the following activities.

1. A question log
2. A learning log (things that they learn on a daily basis)
3. An idea log

I personally use a personally wiki for this. After reading this article, we may want to extend the wiki to act as a question bank for each project.

TiECON Chennai 2008 - A Memorable Event

First, a bit of a background. I had my first two startups in India (both in Chennai) and the next two in the USA. I spend roughly about half my time in Silicon Valley and the other half in Chennai. I attended several TiECON’s in Santa Clara but this was my first in India. I did not know what to expect. The one day, information packed event, was one of the most inspiring conferences I have been to. I can write long accounts of what happened, but I will leave it to better narrators than me.
Every one I talked to, echoed what I felt - it was one of the best learning experiences and one of the most inspiring events. It certainly was like drinking from a fire hose.

“The world is driven by knowledge”

said the Chief Minister, Dr.M.Karunanidhi. He urged all of us to:

Let common man be the focus of innovation.

Great work is inspired by  a great cause. I can’t think of a better cause than this.

Reach out to the down trodden since they do not know how to seek help. Take that extra effort to bring them into the fold and teach them how to improve their lives.

The highly energetic and ever smiling Smt. M K Kanimozhi, Member of Parliment, Tamilnadu. talked about the efforts we need to make to help people who are surprised and may even be suspicious, when some one reaches out to them. She epitomizes the young leadership, we so much need - smart, articulate, completely at ease and very interactive.

The idea of awarding entrepreneurs was a brilliant one. It was a privilege to be in the same room with these people, who do not take no for an answer, who had a vision and a dream and worked hard to make it happen.

Images of the struggles and achievements, painted vividly by various keynote speakers were some of the most awe inspiring moments during the day.

A great blend of keynotes and panels, a very interactive audience, and an event that ran like a well oiled machine, should make the organizers and volunteers proud.

Under the leadership of Gopal Srinivasan and Mr.Ramaraj, two of the most dynamic figures in the industry, TiE organization and all the volunteers did an outstanding job. This event easily compares and even beats some of the TiECON annual events in California. It  is, definitely, one of the best, and most memorable one for me.

With TiECON Chennai 2008, the TiE organization set a high bar for future events. I am glad I was there.

Simple Innovations: Cell phone applications

A typical example of an uncommon use of common devices - innovation at its best. Here is how Cell phones are used to track air pollutions.

Computer scientists in Cambridge, UK, are using bike couriers to monitor air pollution. These couriers are doing their usual jobs, but their bicycles are equipped with air-pollution sensors and GPS units that connect to their cellphones via Bluetooth. So their phones are constantly reporting the levels of carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, and nitrogen dioxide in the area. And back in the lab, servers are updating a Google map for Internet users and regular cellphone users. The sensors used for this project could also be fixed to a pedestrian’s jacket, which means that everybody in the area could become a pollution tracker.

In this depressing world of  conflict and chaos, it is nice to hear about innovative minds at work. The original project website is here.

The project will develop and demonstrate the potential of diverse, low cost sensors to provide data for the planning, management and control of the environmental impacts of transport activity at urban, regional and national level. This includes their implementation on vehicles and people to act as mobile, real-time environmental probes, sensing transport and non-transport related pollutants and hazards.

Thanks to Roland Piquepaille  who runs a column on “How tech trends affect our lives”

Winners in Tech

From Bill Gates on Innovation:

Bill does make the good argument that the winners in tech are rarely the ones who come up with the new idea, but rather the ones who bring it to market properly.

Apple didn’t invent the MP3 player, it just brought it mainstream. Microsoft didn’t invent the graphical OS, it just brought forward the first one compatible with everyone’s old software. YouTube didn’t invent internet video, it was just the first one to package it with an easy embeddable player and a great community. The winners aren’t the ones who do something first, but the ones who did it right for the market and the users.

We can go on with these examples. Google did not invent the Search Engine. They just did a better job of ranking results, scaling the service, providing great response and finally innovating on a business model to make tons of money. These are innovations too. Different kind of innovations than technical innovations.

The full transcript (an entertaining and informative read) is here.

Code as Data

An extension to the Google Site Map to allow your public code to be searched. This is a cool idea. It is taking the philosophy of distributed data one step further. In this case we are treating Code As Data for the purposes of Search. It is just a little innovation that makes it easy for Code search engines to locate code.

From Code Search Site Map:

We’ve heard from a number of site owners who want to make sure their public source code is searchable via Google Code Search. To help with that, we extended the Sitemap Protocol to support code files. This makes it possible to specify all the code files on your site, as well as the programming language and software license for each file.

To get started, check out the new Code Search tags for Sitemaps. For complete software packages that are archives (.tar, .tar.gz, .tar.bz2, or .zip), you can create a packagemap file to describe all the individual code files in each package.

The benefits go beyond Google Code Search. The concept can be used behind the firewall for enterprises to share code and detect duplicate code inside an enterprise as well.

Combining Code Search with AIML may be used to produce an interactive code finder for open source.

Links: Emerging Technologies and Innovation

I enjoy reading about how technology enables innovative solutions. Here are a list of some interesting links

E-textiles to Monitor Your Health 

Virginia Tech (VT) researchers have been busy developing efficient e-textiles — electronic textiles and clothing with embedded wires and sensors — for six years now. Their computerized clothing can monitor your movements, sensing if you’re walking, running, standing, or sitting down.

Bridge Traffic Powers Its Monitoring Sensors

Researchers at Clarkson University, NY, have developed wireless bridge sensors which work without batteries. Instead, they are powered by the vibrations caused by passing traffic. This is good news for all the people in charge of maintaining bridges, who will no longer to have to replace batteries installed in hard-to-access locations.

Self-powered Nanowires

Many research teams around the world are building nanodevices of some kind. But these very small devices need very small sources of power to be fully functional. Now, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) have shown that a single nanowire can produce power by harvesting mechanical energy from its environment. ‘Made of piezoelectric material, the nanowire generates a voltage when mechanically deformed.’