Last to last week we got a chance to visit Vancouver Winter Olympics. This was my first ever visit to Olympics of any sort ( winter/summer/…).
It was great experience and worth going out for a day, especially when its just 3 hours drive from my home.
Vancouver city roads were crowded and was looking like a global village. We did not saw any sporting event as we were not allowed to take our own cars but take special buses instead to further north towards back comb mountains ( Whistler). We enjoyed in the main city seeing other activities going around.
Attended prize distribution ceremony at BC Place ( stadium in Vancouver) and it was mesmerizing event Now I know what it feels when your national flag goes up with National song in the background and whole world cheers for you.
I have heard it so many times in a typical startup discussion forums, where immigrants with great startup idea have been advised to check his ‘visa status’ before he can turn his startup from paper to reality. Apart from all other odds a startup founder has to go through, his visa status is the one he can not change. There is no alternative!
If this immigrant startup founder has migrated to USA like many others on a work visa, there is no law or visa today to support this transition. Transition of an individual from being a job seeker to be a job giver.
In these economical tough times, people of USA needs jobs and providing a way for people to start their companies would tremendously help the nation.
I am supporting Startup Visa, a unique movement to convince USA government to provide Visa for startup founders to come to United States and create more job, create wealth, nuture and grow culture of innovation.
If you support the Startup Visa and have a blog or a website, put the Startup Visa Twitter Widget up on your site.
Darwin’s theory of survival of the fittest applies here as well.
Its 2010 and we still get paper mails in the letter box, but then usage of post offices in India has been significantly dropped ( i don’t have survey numbers to support) but ask any college going student on when did he/she licked a stamp and affixed it on the letter to drop in that red colored post office standing alone.
Phones and emails has made it easy to deliver/communicate message and has hit postal department’s main line of business of ‘delivering messages’ but I think few things needed to be done (from end-user’s point of view) to get this back in business ( Do we need Lalu Yadav to reform this?)
1- Improve service reliability: If a private courier guy can deliver my letter next day( off-course he charges premium), why cant post office does it as well? With all its resources and being a government owned body, probably they can offer a cheaper and reliable service.
2- Diversifying business: Post offices have last mile presence, which is a great plus. They can use their spaces and network to sell/provide other services and maximize their revenues. People would love to finish/perform more than just dropping for buying stamps.
In my next post I will be writing more about some of the business post offices can get into to diversify and maximize their ROI.
I am more frequently sharing on twitter, You can follow me on @ruchitgarg
When is the last time you visited to a post office or used a postal stamp and sent or received something using Indian postal services?
I thought this is because we now have phones and emails and no one really needs it anymore (or a very small percentage or urban population) but then I am amazed when I see queue in post office in Redmond, every single time I visit it.
This leads me to think that, post office in India are in sick state ( or may be dying by now) not because there is an advent of phones and emails but because post offices in India have not been able to live up to expectation of their customers.
We do get snail mails even today in India, mobile bills, advertisements, updates from local community and what not, but then they are getting delivered by private courier players and not by postal services.
More on next post about what Post offices in India can do differently.
Having a infant in house who has started walking around is sure shot way of keeping your house floor dirty.
Since we cannot afford to keep moving the traditional vacuum cleaner everyday twice a day or more, we decided to buy iRobot- robot that cleans the floor.
Its a common gadget here for this part of world, but for me certainly first robot.
Watch this video about how this round shaped robot works.
I don’t have photograph to share, but then Chandigarh airport is literally looks like a bus stand, and its been like the same since many years.
This was my second chance to visit Chandigarh airport on my way to Lucknow couple of days back. Airport starts with a parking with diversion signs to a small gulley laid with uneven red brick road (khadanja in hindi), getting narrower and then takes a turn further, which looks like a typical toilet corner on a highway state tourism hotel. In few words, its pathetic.
Amazed that city which is home to celebrities like Gul Panag and our spinner harbhajan singh ( who travel frequently to the city) is in such a bad state.
When tweeted about the sad state of ‘airport’, someone replied “in the movie ‘Dev D’, the chandigarh railway station was used to shoot airport arrival scene. Heh.”
I think more taxis takes off from chandigarh airport than flights, because of insufficient working equipments for flights to land in Chandigarh airport on winters.
Update: Travelled Mumbai, Hyderabad airport day after, and it was al together different world, friendly and modern..India is truely diverse country.
When you are into development mode, what you think about features, features, features and features and which leads to feature creep.
Below is a simple way to decide how to throw away a feature.
Plot a 2d graph like the one shown below with Y-Axis representing Value:value which a particular feature will bring.
X-Axis represent Risk : what you risk loosing or resources you for would end up consuming.
Now put dots ( your features) on this graph based on how you or your team feels about the features when you measure it on value/risk axis.
Anything, which doesn’t Add value for anyone (you, customer, your stakeholder…) is completely ruled out.
Low or no risk with some value is good. High value and some extent of risk will work out as well. So portions which are marked out green below are the ones you should look at first.
Note: This appears to be simple. I bet main challenge is to find what is the correct ‘value’ of doing that feature or ‘risk’ over that other feature. Its something very very domain and team specific to attach any value risk to a particular feature.
I am more frequently sharing on twitter, You can follow me on @ruchitgarg
My outlook calendar has more Out of office (OOF) messages than actual meetings. Holidays are here in USA. Work is slow all across USA, my team has released a great games offering for Holidays Games On Demand.
I will be travelling to India and will be there for around 20 days, visiting around 6-7cities including, Delhi, Chandigarh, Lucknow, Hyderabad, Mumbai..
This one is going to be a very hectic trip! Will keep you posted.
I am sharing lot more and frequent on twitter, You can follow me on @ruchitgarg
I am 99.99% sure that you would go and build a prototype ( can be a paper sketch) before you actually go and build a real product.
Here is a good piece of article which covers some tools which can help you create nice little prototypes. Most of them are paid but comes with trial versions. So be quick to create your prototype. Even if it leaves a watermark in there you should be fine explaining your idea ( unless you know that your audience wont like it and you might loose a big deal)
If you are working on your strategy to reach upto maximum number of users and increase your customer base, you might want to read this recent study conducted by Business.com on Social Media.
It tries to give answers to some of the interesting questions like:
To what social media sites do business people turn when seeking the information they need to do their jobs on a day-to-day basis? And what are they looking for?
What do people consider to be the most useful social media resources for business information (and, therefore, the most valuable social media sites on which B2B companies should participate in order to reach their target audience)?
What are the most popular types of social media initiatives among B2B companies, and is the impact of these initiatives visible in business results?
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