Vinu’s Online Cloud

Someone whom I know very closely, met Subroto Bagchi and has instantly become a fan of him. Mr Bagchi had a similar impact on me when I met him during my stint at ICICI. He had come as part of a presentation team for the consulting assignment Mindtree was involved with ICICI’s Rurual Initiative. My friend then mailed me one of his articles titled ‘Defining Success‘ - quotes from there:

It is not about what you create for yourself, it is what you leave behind that defines success.

Till date, I measure my success in terms of that sense of larger connectedness.

Imagination is everything. If we can imagine a future, we can create it, if we can create that future, others will live in it. That is the essence of success.

To me, success is about the sense of independence; it is about not seeing the world but seeing the light.

There I learnt that there is no limit to how concerned you can be for another human being and what is the limit of inclusion you can create.

In them, we learnt the power of disagreements, of dialogue and the essence of living with diversity in thinking. Success is not about the ability to create a definitive dogmatic end state; it is about the unfolding of thought processes, of dialogue and continuum.

Success to me is about Vision. It is the ability to rise above the immediacy of pain. It is about imagination. It is about sensitivity to small people. It is about building inclusion. It is about connectedness to a larger world existence. It is about personal tenacity. It is about giving back more to life than you take out of it. It is about creating extra-ordinary success with ordinary lives.

I loved the points (thought, question and metaphor!!_ Mark Sigal (Network Garden) raises in the post: Social Map is All about Me

I bring Google into this equation for two reasons. One, to cite a tangible example of how the market goes about defining propriety and property rights in the information age. Two, because I believe that Google, as a benefactor of these rights, will need to share with consumers more of its social map of user clickstreams, engagement metrics and their correlates if it is to maintain the public trust. Akin to a credit report, I think consumers have a right to this data.

Therefore, what I envision is a consumer-friendly dashboard and analytics application that allows me to visualize the bigger picture by seeing the same contextual relationships that Google sees. Think zeitgeist-type reports that provide answers to the Top 10 questions relevant to MY universe (e.g., who read, commented, shared, how many) packaged in such a way that I can ask what-if questions to my heart’s content. To me, the social map is all about enabling applications that allow consumers to take back control of their data, help them to connect the dots between their various interests, orchestrate their brand and systematically engage their audience. This is the promise of the information age.

Given that, if information is the electricity of this era and information ABOUT information is the richest energy source of all (just ask Google), then shouldn’t we have universal access to this type of data? Heck, if Google wants my heart and soul vis-à-vis their AppEngine initiative, they need to give me a unified way to call upon and interact with all of the global data functions that they have cataloged (web pages, blogs, images, news, video, email, maps, calendars, etc.).

Facebook, Yahoo, and Microsoft: Couldn’t you disrupt the disrupter by doing the same? Is there any reason that you wouldn’t — or shouldn’t?

Kalam speaks out his thoughts about a Leader …

• First, the leader must have vision. Without vision, you cannot be a
  leader.
• Second, the leader must be able to travel into an unexplored
  path. Normally the tendency is for people to travel along well-laid out
  ways.
• Third, the leader must know how to manage success, and even more
  importantly, failure.
• fourth trait is that the leader should have the courage to make
  decisions.
• Fifth, the leader should have nobility in management. Every
  action of the leader should be transparent.
• And finally, the leader
  should work with integrity and succeed with integrity.