Recognition for OpenGyan and our work to students community

OpenGyan received its first recognition in media. Nanganallur Talk is a neighborhood weekly in Chennai circulated to 42000+ homes. OpenGyan and our work to the students' community was covered in last week's stories. Our sincere thanks to Nanganallur Talk team for writing about us. Special thanks for Mr. Sreedhar Srinivasan who asked us lots of interesting questions during the interview. Here is the our first media article about us.

Nanganallur Talk (click on the image to enlarge)

I wish and hope that we live up to the words.

Many Thanks to everyone (students, professors, institutions and supporters) who supported us and taking us here

You can join our facebook page and support us - http://www.facebook.com/opengyan (a word of mouth really helps us and more importantly it helps the students out there)

Trust

Trust.

Trust has become a commodity and found a place in vocabulary (more in workplace and little lesser in personal lives). Particularly the workplace has become more talkative about this "trust" and sometimes they appear as mere ploy. Many times and many of us speak about trust and say we are trustworthy (or try to prove by words to someone that we are trustworthy). 

Trust isn't a commodity. Trust is understood best when we don't talk about it or even think about it. Trust comes as a natural output of a fruitful, selfless and longer relationship.

Look at the picture, the kid never said that he trusted his father and father never asked his kid to trust him. The trust like this is an outcome of a fruitful relationship. If you don't have one, don't expect the trust.

Appraisal - The horror Movie

Some thoughts on appraisal and events around it (most of these can be applied every day) and how to cope up with the depression/disappointment.

Goals & Results

If you don't have a goal, don't ever think of a meaningful discussion. A goal with a consistent result is very important before any discussion. Many people think that the goals can derived from their job profile but then the real ambiguity comes in when the discussion happens over the results. Avoid using % when you talk about your consistency. Bring out specific instances that made you happy and write about instances where you thought you are stretching your limits of thinking and ability. If you have taken any specific initiative, even if it is small but not usually expected at your level, talk about it and list down your learning. That is sure way of opening the discussion.

When you are writing your results, be sure to do self-introspection. What do you think about your result. Did you achieve what you wanted to achieve or do you think that there can be improvements in the way your are working. It conveys to people who review your performance to think that you are doing your bit and spending time with you will be more meaningful.

See the future

Seeing the future is not about when you will be promoted :-). Often we don't indulge to visualize the future. Sometimes, seeing through future gives us stress as the future may seem so uncertain. The uncertainty is more as you grow. As you grow, your growth really depends on how you embrace the events and the events are products of many people/events. If you handle it gracefully, probably the people watching it will be able to give your an honest feedback. If you try to handle it gracefully and if you cannot handle due to lack of knowledge or skill or exposure, the folks may mentor you. But if you don't want to handle gracefully or if you don't like to absorb the uncertainty (if you prefer to be in comfort zone), you don't deserve to grow. Seeing through the future and ready to absorb the uncertainty is an important trait. Talk about how you see your future and paint a picture of where you are going to see yourself by next year. Tell the appraiser what you will do when you are about to face failure and how you will mitigate it.

Grow - vertically and horizontally

We often have a fragmented view on growth. We always see growth to be vertical. But the growth can also be horizontal. Trying to do something which you have not done but little closer to your current job is the way to start. When you contribute horizontally, people appreciate it and often translate into a vertical growth. Ponder about your horizontal growth and ask questions on where you can contribute. The questions like these cannot be left unanswered by an appraiser.

Not understanding the environment

If you bring a value, first observe whether the folks are experiencing it. If they don't experience, the point is loud and clear. Your value is a hype or at very least you are trying to overemphasis your value. Since the workplace has so many folks, it is very important that you benchmark yourself with overall organization. Failure to do so leads to what i call suicide - underestimation. Underestimating the expectations and underestimating your peers is a very sick way of trying to increase your value. Another important red flag that i call as "slow death" is thinking that whatever we are doing is just fine to be in top league.  This is slow death because it leads slow degradation and mediocrity (becomes a habit). Reaching to the top or falling to the bottom cannot have overnight. When you are on the way to mediocrity, the first thing that you will do is failing to sense what is going on.

Lack of initiation and not interesting to know the real feedback

If you lack initiation on knowing about you, this by itself is sufficient for mediocrity. The initiation and natural interest on how you have been seen is an important thing. This often interrelated to above points. If you have goals and performed well, you will have something interesting to talk about. So, be sure to take initiative in understanding how others see you.

Fear of underrating leading to overrating of self

Don't fear that a honest self appraisal and self rating will lead to lower rating. A thorough review will give you the strategies about your near future and the final rating depends not only on how you perform but also on how others performed. An open mind will always willing to see who did well and possibly learn from her. Don't ever overrate yourself.

Talk about what organization needs

At some point of time in your discussion, be sure to talk about what organization needs. How do you see the organization and how it can be improved. Question the status quo. While nothing can be changed in single discussion, people will understand your achievements and your urge to improve the organization. People will also understand the obstacles and how you overcame that. It could be very well be a starting point of a change.

Your improvement is organization's value addition

And finally, it is very true to that your improvement is organization value addition. If you continue to be where you are, i believe it is point of suicide. Even a little baby step helps. So, don't think that appraisal is mere ritual. If it is done properly, it will fuel your growth and can completely redefine you.

Fielding the dejection/disappointment

This is very important characteristic. If you are not happy with the end results of appraisal, you may be depressed. At this stage, having a conversation with the guy who appraised you makes sense or you can reach out to human resources. Until your depression goes away, the best thing you can do is avoiding degradation of your attitude/work. If you allow degradation (particularly the attitude), it may even sound that whatever verdict that has been given is correct. The best thing is trying to make the next appraisal eventful (may be it will be hard to digest but then it has to be absorbed. Let us be practical). If you experiencing this depression consistently over the years, the time has come to become graceful (think of finding solace elsewhere, the world is too big and certainly you have a space in it).

A lot of these things can be acted upon through the year, so why you wait till appraisal and most of it in the hands of the appraiser :-)

For folks whose appraisal are due, best of luck :-)

Touting won't buy anything

When you go to school and learn alphabets and your papa proudly says my kiddo knows alphabets. You proudly smile that you know alphabets. When someone asks you to say it, you proudly say "a, b, c, d......". It was exciting. It is never a touting. It was celebration. It was a paradigm shift. You are just trying to learning something new. In fact you just start to learn something formally.

But when you are in 10th grade and again your papa says my kiddo knows alphabets. And you proudly smile and your papa is even prouder. Now, your dad asks you to say alphabets. Now, you can understand that pain that others undergo. It is touting.

Well, a lot of things depends on what you have to say and to whom are you saying that to.

Touting by any means won't enable you rather pulls you down.

BTW, this is a just a hang over post after experiencing something which i can't digest. But i forgot it after watching this comedy clip (from a Tamil movie) :-) (when i see this comedy i remember the quality of some of the whitepapers, honestly this is much better than those whitepapers)

Is communication a key factor?

In one of our workshops @ OpenGyan,

A student asked, "How important is communication?"

I said, "very important".

He then asked, "how much should i improve?"

I said, "i don't know the answer but you and i should keep improving our skills".

He smiled and then asked, "will i get a job for my communication skills".

I said, "well, if you are looking for a technical work, communication skills alone won't fetch you a job. It is your programming skills that would fetch you a job but for that you have to express yourself clearly".

He asked me again, "i have difficulty in communication". 

I said, "as long as your express yourself with a bit of difficult toastmaster. I don't think much about my English when speaking but i try my bit by reading. That's my homework."

and listen genuinely it should be fine. don't think much about whether you are correct grammatically or you speak like a

I asked him, "how are you feeling now? do you think, talking to me is a difficult task?" 

He said, "No" 

I said, "that's is enough to start with. Don't think too much about work. Communication is more like conversation and holding interest of other person. As long as you do that, it's enough but keep improving"

[He then sat in his chair with big relief.]

Take away for him: Good technical skills and ability to converse on the topic of your interest is sufficient at work or interview. And that's my experience too [it fetched me a job 12 years back and i have been recruiting folks with average communication skills but with good technical skills]. 

Play or Watch - Be Explicit

Never be on the wall. Never be undecided for long time. You can be a player or audience. But you cannot afford to spoil someone's dream when you are undecided or when you decided to stand on the wall (to join at anytime). It is so much energy sucking.

Being on the wall gives us feeling that we can chip in at anytime but then the folks who are already playing the game would feel that you are an alien.

If you want to be included, you will have to absorb risk. You cannot avoid risk and expect a reward at the same time. Be wise.

Choose the game - play it or watch it.

[another personal rant]

Your Call is Important to us, "please hold"

Assume this. You are dialing to your bank's telephonic banking wanting to change some trivial information. Once you dial and after you successfully chosen the language/service pressing sequence of numbers between 1 and 9 several times, you reach a queue. For reaching this queue you should have had good karma and spent 5-10 minutes of your time.

After reaching this queue, you will actually wait there for a while and the voice keeps assuring you that you are very very important person for them [like aam aadhmi for politicians, the account holders is for banks. May it be aam aadhmi, account holders or employees lose their significance in isolation and termed differently as "individual violating the code of conduct or rebellion"]. It will either say, "your call is important to us, please hold, our customer service personnel will attend you shortly" or you will hear a nice mandolin or flute. After about 10 minutes there and if you have luck (and patience), you will be listened and the work will done in 30 seconds. In order to get the job done, i need to spend 20 minutes of my time and bear the cost for calling them for 20 minutes. The following images are both serious and comedy depending upon whether this is happening to you or to your friend (and if this happens to your neighbor, if you will feel happier :-))

But everyday, we are waiting in a queue. We realize the fact very lately that the queue that we stood was to reach another queue. Even if we know that there are several queues we just feel we can reach comfortably. But it becomes quite an adventure when all of a sudden a new queue was dropped from heaven. This is a new queue. You have to stand in this new queue before reaching another queue (my inner voice will say, yeah, i know that). If you get a adrenaline surge because of movement from one queue to another, i feel that it is sure way of doing disservice to myself.

Many things in life can be equated to such useless queue - money, buying couple of flats, couple plots outside the city, getting married at right age, getting promotions at work after series of suck ups, getting nice increment. But we never intend to find a queue for happiness and we never find time to find such a queue which is worth standing. I can't find a better picture than this - burying our own head in a sand.

This kind of situation leads to slow death. I mean slow death because such queues suck our blood and yet we don't recognize that they in fact suck the blood to lead to slow death. They conceal themselves  and that includes "working for someone :-)"

BTW, this is not a advice for you to be like this or like that. It is just my inner voice. What i feel about myself :-) Sailing in the same boat?

OpenGyan – Workshops Flow Chart

The students attending our workshops always wanted to have follow-up workshops and some of them even told us that they need one or two easy workshops at beginner level. So, we thought that it is better to have a flow of workshops targeting second year students. The idea is to get involved at early stage so that both the students and OpenGyan has ample time to cover most of the topics without compromising on the technical depth. Having in this in mind, we have come up with several streams - Linux Programming, Data Structures and Algorithms/Algorithm Design, Testing, Software Engineering, Web Programming and Soft Skills. All the streams will have three levels – Praarambh (Beginner), Madhyama (Intermediate) and Dheekshana (expert).

For example, if you get involved with OpenGyan in your second year at engineering (for a Bachelors in Engineering student) or first year in Post Graduate course (MCA, MTech, MSc) there is a high probability that you become expert in a couple of streams and you will get to know about other streams as well at a beginner level. Ideally, we feel that a student can reach to a level of expert in couple of streams (fluent with hands-on) and expert in soft skills in two to three years’ time frame.

We are also planning to have some coursework (mini-projects or online intern kind of thing) once in a semester however mini-projects/intern will be limited to few students. We are in planning phase and more updates to come within a month from now.

You may want to check out our flow chart. The online version can be found here.

As always, we would like to get your feedback and request you to spread a word.

Staying Fit Away From Home

This is a guest post by Michael Manning. Michael Manning is a fitness and healthy living aficionado. You can find his writing at his new blog located at http://mikemanningmusings.blogspot.com

Summer is on its way, and for many people, that means it's time for vacation. Unfortunately, it also means that you could ruin the physique you've worked so hard to attain. It's easy to slack off on your diet and fitness routines while you're traveling. There are plenty of fun things to do and ready access to any junk food your heart desires. Furthermore, it's tempting to ditch your healthy habits using the vacation as an excuse. To avoid re-packing on the pounds, it's important to maintain your fitness routine away from home.

Plan for Fitness

When you're arranging your accommodations, try to choose a hotel that has a fitness center. On a recent trip to San Francisco I was able to book great accommodations because I did some research beforehand. I checked a travel review site where I could see all of the hotels in San Francisco and check what amenities they offered and see great reviews from people who previously stayed there. When you get up in the mornings, head straight to the fitness room and get your workout out of the way. Studies have shown that this gives you more energy and makes you more likely to make healthy food choices throughout the day. If the fitness room should get full, however, it's important to have backup. Just in case, it's recommended that you pack some minor fitness gear such as a pulse monitor and some resistance bands. With these things, you can easily work out in the comfort and privacy of your hotel room.

Choose Wisely from the Menu

Many hotels serve a continental breakfast. Depending on how you make your choices, this can be either a benefit or a burden. Without a doubt, there will be junk foods like pastries, kids' cereals, french toast and waffles. However, there will also be healthy foods that will help you maintain your fitness goals. Aim for the healthy foods so you can keep up with your diet, which will also help your energy levels for the day. For snacks and other meals, a trip to the local grocery can be helpful. Stock up on ready-made salads, nuts or fresh and dried fruit. It is important to indulge every once in a while when you are on vacation, but keeping an overall healthy diet will help you with your sleep, energy levels, and stress which will in turn make your trip much more pleasant.

Stay Hydrated

It's easy to become dehydrated during your travels. For starters, the air inside of a plane's cabin is very dry, causing you to lose water rapidly. While flying, make an effort to drink a glass of water at least every hour. It's also best to avoid dehydrating beverages like alcohol, sugar and caffeine. Once you arrive at your destination, if you spend a lot of time outside in the sun, always bring some water with you. Your metabolism and energy levels suffer when you're under-hydrated, leaving you vulnerable to weight gain and fatigue.

OpenGyan - Do you like it?

May be you are heading for a weekend drive, catching up your emails or seeing this page accidentally in your timeline. Got two minutes to spare?

If so, here we go..

Having spent close to two years in OpenGyan (actually it is 5 man years, 2 guys 2 putting two years and one guy about an years' effort), we have reached a stage of self-assessment. This self-assessment is not to terminate OpenGyan but to steer it towards something meaningful. OpenGyan should not be redundant and doing things that are already done at colleges. We want to work along with colleges and try to see whether we can create a spark.

So, first thing that we did was to review all the feedback from students. Well, it sounded to us that more than 90% of the students wanted these kind of workshops again and again. The feedback from the professors are also good. All of them convey to us that they are extremely happy with the workshops.

Next, how about getting feedback from common people? If you can help us in answering these three questions, it would be great. You can answer either in the comments section here or you can email be at grabyourfreedom@gmail.com if you prefer to be confidential. The questions are

1. Do you really like the idea of OpenGyan - going to schools to conduct workshops(kindly check our website and Facebook page for a while, would be glad if you can like us in Facebook.)
2. If you follow OpenGyan, what is the most you like and what is the aspect that we should improve upon?
3. Would you like to share the works of OpenGyan to people you know who can be benefited (professors and colleges students)?

Please do share your feedback.

BTW, i really like it merely because of connecting to the students. The next thing that we should focus is to go place where the students do not get exposure. Money should not be a gating factor whether or not a person get access and the interest should only be the gating factor. Let us see how it goes.

If you are looking to volunteer for some of the workshops (as trainer), please do let us know. We shall involve you when opportunities arrives.

Awesomeness - Impressive "Impress.JS"

Again, another theme. Why don't i share something on a regular basis which is awesome [Since everyone that i m an awesome guy, i promise you that i won't write about myself]. BTW, all these are something which i come across, read in web or someone met in my life.

This time, i happen to hear and try an awesome.

Impress.JS is cute Javascript that helps in creating wonderful presentations. It helps you to express wonderful ideas and by the way you must know HTML, JavaScript and CSS (or very least try to learn all these). One of the aspects of Impress.JS is that it paves way for keeping the presentation simple and so it will be really an aid (and you will have to be main thing). Without your articulation, may be your presentation deck alone will convey 10%. "Impress.JS" and "Presentation Zen" will certainly take long way. BTW, "Presentation Zen" is another awesome that will be writing shortly.

After initial play, i feel that "Impress.JS" is very promising and really cool.

Have a look at here for a short demo and here to download it.

Have a good day.