Kuntal's posterous

Sanskrit Learning Resources for Beginners

I have been learning Sanskrit for almost 8 months now. I would like to share some of the resources that have been very helpful to me in my first phase of learning. Following is the list.

 

Tribes - The changing face of leadership

During this week, I read an interesting book "Tribes". It’s a compendious study about the tribes by Seth Godin. 

The book mainly talks about

1. Tribe (As the title suggests) (A tribe is a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an ideal.)
2. Manager vs Leader
3. Bringing the change in today's world with leadership

I was able to relate a lot of it to what I am currently doing. I have been managing software projects through out my 7 years at DIGICORP, the book showed me how to become a leader and bring the change. 

Following are the lessons I learnt 

How a leader is different than a manager?
Except from book 
Leaders have followers. Managers have employees.
Managers make widget. Leaders make change.
You can't manage without knowledge, You can't lead without imagination.

Why become a leader?
Excerpt from book
The barriers to leadership have fallen. There are tribes everywhere in search of leaders. Which creates dilemma for you: without a barrier, why not begin?
Simple example: ten years ago, if you wanted to publish a book, you needed to find a publisher that would say yes. No publisher, no book. 
Today, of course, you can publish a book all by yourself. Just visit Lulu.com and you're done.

How to challenge the status quo and become a leader?
In the book, there are no how-to lists, checklists or For Dummies Style instruction manual for finding a tribe and lead it. Because every tribe is different and every leader is different. It is the very nature of leadership that you're doing something which is not done before. If you were, then you would be following and not leading.

The book further says that you only need to know two things
The first thing is that individuals have far more power than ever before in history. One person can change the industry. One person can declare war. One person can reinvent the science or politics or technology.
The second thing you need to know is that the only thing holding you back from becoming the kind of person who changes the thing is: lack of faith. Faith that you can do it. Faith that it's worth doing. Faith that failure won't destroy you.

Why to use social media?
I have restrained myself from actively using Facebook and Twitter till now. I always thought that they bring a lot of noise at work. You waste a lot of time while you use them. On a different note as the book says, these are the two most powerful social tool for gathering information and connecting the people. In order to lead a tribe, the most important thing is to enable effective communication between the tribe members. I read one wonderful incidence about Scott Beale, which shows how powerful twitter can get.

In the book, the above points are explained through examples of individuals and organizations, who has challenged the status quo, believed in the change and created the movement successfully.

To mention some of them

Joel Spolsky
Joel is running a small software company in New York. He has challenged the status quo of Software Industry and successfully led the movement. If you are in software world do subscribe to his blog. It’s the best one for programmers and the owners as well.

Jason Fried
Jason is co-founder of 37signals. They have challenged the status quo of the project management. They came up with a simple and very effective idea for project management with basecamp, which turned the industry upside down. "Getting Real" and "Rework" are great books that have influenced the way I plan and execute at my business today.

Thomas Barnett
Thomas Barnett influenced the way in which pentagon views its enemies, vulnerabilities and future structure. He is the best example of leading from bottom.

Danielle Sucher and Dave Turner
They have challenged status quo in the restaurant industry. They both run an occasional restaurant in Brooklyn. It opens only 20 times a year on Saturday nights, you can see the menu online for that and book your appointment online. They give us a example of small but tightly connected tribe.

Muhammad Yunus
He firmly believed that micro-finance is a tool to fight poverty. He founded Grameen Bank. He continued the movement for 30 years and incited the movement around this thought.

Above are the examples of the leaders from diverse fields and they have something common. That is what exactly this book explains.
There are many other examples inside the book and they encourage you to become a leader.

Following are some interesting title around the same topic.
Tribal Leadership
Here Comes Everybody

Finally a request from author of the book,
If you find anything interesting above, go ahead and read this book and make a choice to become a leader.

I am thankful to the author for creating a wonderful piece of writing and enabling us to change the world and lead the tribes. I am planning to read some other books from the same author.

Learnings from this week

It had been a great week. Its a short week and longer weekend at DIGICORP this time. We celebrate "DIGICORP Employee Day" on this Friday. The concept is we make sure that employees get one long weekend during the period of March - August. In Gujarat, we usually do not have any holiday during this time, so we tend to give some relief to our team:)

The MacBook Pro So Far !!!!

After a long time thinking, I actually made up my mind to get a 13" entry level MacBookPro(MBP) for myself.

Applying my hands on it for almost a month now, I would like to share my first-cut experience with you all.

Let me explain you the big-time switch from a Dell Inspiron to a MBP. I have been a very calculative person whenever it comes to spending for my self. So buying a MBP was obviously a costly affair for me as compared to other laptops. The two strong influences which drove me to go for a MBP -

The first one comes from my all-time buddy and also the co-Founder of DIGICORP, Mr. Abhishek Desai. He told me that with MBP I'll definitely be able to accomplish more work in a day than before, which sounded interesting. The reasons behind - Fast Browsing, NO hangED state and superb sound Quality, and a faultless display on MBP.

The later came from one of my client and friend, Ajit Menon who is a hard-core apple fan. He told me that if you want to build better softwares, you should surround yourself with better softwares. And because Mac is a leading platform and Apple being the leader in building great software, opt for it.

So the two strong supporters of Apple surrounding me made my transition easier. However, the second advice vigorously urged me to move to this platform.

Moving ahead, find the comparative analysis describing my first month with Mac -  

Positives - 

• Excellent Display - (I have a great collection of photos and they really look different and cool on MBP.)
• Excellent Touch enabled Trackpad -  (I was not using track pad on my Dell Laptop, after MBP I am in love with the trackpad. Believe it or not but I have a wireless mouse right in front of me, but seems to be of no use. I like the idea of One Finger, Two Fingers, Three Fingers and Four Fingers)
• Superior Skype Call Quality - (Since last two years I am working with a client in Botswana and phone-calls being criminally expensive i've been using skype as a mode for one-to-one communication,before switching to MBP I always had issues with the call on Skype. However the very first day of my call on MBP, before I could judge the call-quality, i got an instant feedback from their side saying my voice was crystal clear that day.)

The things I did not like

• I am a pro Microsoft Excel user, I have installed Office for Mac and it has serious usability issues.

I am fan of shortcuts and using software or Operating System more efficiently. I would like to know more about how MBP can be utilized more efficiently.

Do share your experiences.