Posted on

How many friends do you have?

Happy Friendship day! Am I late for it? I guess no. Friendship cards, friendship shayerri, stolen messages, common message, smses and emails. Oops! blog posts as well. Everything is happening on the F day. Thats so great and here is my post for THE day.

Orkut Friends count How many friends do you have?
One, two, three, ….

Do you remember one of the most frequently asked childhood question, “Johny Johny(change it with your name for personalization), how many friends do you have?” and then you started counting on your fingers, one – Tommy, two – harry, four – popy and ……Also jane and pinky … uncle, I have so many friends!

Get into the time machine and ask this question at different phases of your life, when you were not so moma’s kid, when you were not so young, when you were really young and now when you want to stay young. What would have been your answer?

In past had problems in counting friends? Don’t worry if you haven’t counted your friends in past, here is a way to do it (and once again it is by Google):
orkut making the count easy
Wow, it is even arranged further like best friend and so. Great, not bad at all. I think undoubtedly orkut can be voted as the best friendship tool for the era. Does the count matters? Does the intensity matters? Hey, I don’t know, neither did I ever bought a friendship barometer to measure the intensity nor did I ever borrow an abacus for the count. I have some wonderful friends and I thank life for being so kind to me. Life is so short and don’t bother to categorize, count or measure friendship. Don’t define friendship and let it happen its own way with:

  1. One unplanned smile.
  2. One eye accident.
  3. One unwanted fight.
  4. Many years of silence.
  5. ………….

Life is so short, so be happy with undefined friends and live friendship to its fullest. To be a friend a mine ignore all the above para with one sentence “Be yourself, Be imperfect for a perfect friendship“.

Happy friendship day, happy friendship week and happy friendship year!

Posted on

Dramatics time

It is Aug knocking again. SOCH is over and I have no other additional responsibility for Aug 15 except preparing the themes and quiz. This year I am planning to take up a serious role in skit. I used to do guest appearance so far, either a malu in English skit or a weird villager confusing people (I think it was fun).

I met our Assistant director yesterday (at 10 pm) and discussed a little more about the skits. We will have the alpha meeting this Sunday and I might take 2 roles. After the camps this is Rocking time again! I will keep you all updated.

Posted on

Happy Bday to Grmtech

(I am not associated with Grmtech anymore)
It was 19th May again, the time to celebrate Grmtech Bday. Got busy after that with all the server audits, better late than never. So here we go with the reports of Grmtech’s 4th Anniversary. This year we had more space to arrange the party as we are shifted to our own office at AE665.

I need to rush to office, so here is a summary of overall party:-

  • There were 10 Maharaj’s (Cooks) for the day.
  • A local music band was there too, singing a mix of Bengali and Hindi songs. I liked most of the songs except the Himesh’s songs, you certainly need special talent to sing his songs.
  • A cake worth a cake, full of chocolate. It was specially made with Grmtech Logo on it.
  • A series of games including treasure hunt, musical chair and so on.
  • A special dance party, I did a Google dance too.
  • Then there was chocolates for winners and Khanna for lossers.

Here are some of pics (and some nostalgic moments)
Continue reading “Happy Bday to Grmtech”

Posted on

Wow, my Blog under top Indian HR/Management blogs

A blog list compiled by the top Indian blogger (thanks Amit for compiling the list). I saw my blog under HR/Marketing/Finance category. I was happy to see that and also a very nostalgic moment, I just looked back for once. to recap the journey I had so far.

My expertise is Technology (Web Technology mainly), I always loved to handle the toughest Technical challenges, from Kerberos, RSA encryption to backward reservation protocol, from htaccess to making a single-user wordpress a multi-user wordpress I loved the journey.

I then shifted to Crowdsourcing (now the world is talking about it, wisdom of crowd. We started this journey almost three years back, a true learning experience. Now we know the mistakes GOG TV guys are making or the biggest thing naukri.com is missing, we had made these mistakes too).

From Crowdsourcing I then shifted to HR Management, there is nothing as great as having a great team. Motivating, Mentoring and everything to get the right company climate (This article has few points that I agree to, not all though).

Few years back our VC (who happens to be a co-founder of a multi-billion company) said, “The most experienced people in the company should handle HR“. (Even Google does the same, after the final interview, but before an offer is extended, every Google hire, all 10,000-plus through 2006, is approved by one of Google’s founders, Sergey Brin or Michigan native and U-M graduate Larry Page.) Job as a recruiter is challenging and important. Currently I am serving Grmtech as a Leader (a mix of all, tech, markeing, HR).

Did anyone know that I have learned US credit system. From FICO score simulation to new Vantage score, from state-wise SOL to debt solution options, mortgages to insurances, payday loan sad stories to Grameen bank smiles and everything that comes in the way. I have handled few financial forums as moderator (now I hardly do, I am helping our team with our new mortgage book), surprising but true.

There is no fun in being perfect but there is much fun in trying. I am glad to see my blog under the top Indian HR/Management blogs. I hardly get time to blog a proper post. As of now I have almost 5 post in draft stage, hoping to finish it this weekend.

What is that I want to do now?
Beat Google
I want to beat Google, the adsense and adwords (The search world). (Is that possible, beating Google??????????) You can call me crazy but I am working towards it. My Philosophy behind this mission, “People want information not sites”. Look at this, I am searching for “Auto loan”, I get ten websites which will explain me “what an auto loan is about”. I do not think I am satisfied by reading ten sites with 1,00,000 of links to understand the same thing. I am designing one search engine which will not have duplicate information in search result, it will have the ever missing Human Intelligence Layer. Google tried it with co-op but its not the way for sure. Success is not guaranteed else it won’t have been so interesting. Lets see. Adsense and Adwords (similar feature) to have the distributed Human Intelligence layer. Its going to be fun.

Thanks to all the readers who bear my blog.

Update: Ranjan has put my blog under Technology list, thanks 🙂

Posted on

Who are Grmtech Leaders?

(I am no more associated with Grmtech)
Before writing about website download speed and sales comparison let me clarify some of the queries thrown at my mailboxes. Today I took a four hour class on “leadership” (the ppt will be made available through this blog). After the presentation even my colleagues wanted me to define my role as “Grmtech Leader” (If Grmtech interests you, contact me at ajiissac(at)gmail.com as we are looking for Innovative minds.). For all those who do not know about my involvement with Grmtech, I think I am the first employee for Grmtech and I have completed over 40 months with Grmtech.

Yes I accept that the position title sounds a little out of box to many. “What does a Grmtech leader actually do?”. Let me try to simplify my role as a Grmtech Leader (this is for all those who have asked me these questions over 5 times 🙂 ).

Grmtech leader is like an Internal VC (Venter Capitalist) who invests company money in teams. Grmtech is like a VC firm supporting and motivating different teams (you can call them “companies in a company”). Grmtech leader is supposed to help the teams with proper resources and guidance. This was a simple (rather not so complex) definition of a complex (rather not so simple) position. The work I do as a Grmtech leader includes:-

  • Culture and climate check: Since Grmtech is innovation centric, we need to make sure that 75% of the Grmtech smells like a university than a company. We also create the required positive energy zones for innovations. I handle some 6 to 7 innovation centers and I am very happy to say that almost every member is involved in innovation. We encourage attempts that bring success but failure is never discouraged.
  • Salary and Incentive policies: We hire artists and want to pay them on the basis of performance; thus incentive designing is a crucial part of our culture. We are trying to make it as stable as possible by adding improvement tabs. Our target is to make sure everyone working with Grmtech for over a period of 3 to 5 years should take home a 6 digit salary. We can do that, as we are a product based company and not a service oriented one (one right idea can change everything).
  • Innovation centers: This is one of the tasks I like. All Grmtech teams run innovation centers and I encourage innovation through these centers by broadcasting it. Also, I award one innovation every month (awarded only once the idea is implemented, ideas without implementation is considered dead in Grmtech). Soon I will be awarding the members with maximum failures or attempts too, as experiment is the source of innovation (and many of us needs to be trained and explained the need of failure).
  • Human firewall: I try to act as a firewall for the company by filtering out bad entrants. In other words, I am involved in the hiring and firing process (At Grmtech we do not like to fire anyone but constructive feedbacks are given to help the team members).
  • I was(am) a programmer: Since I had spent some good time in programming, I help teams with technical issues too (nowadays, I do this very rarely as we were able to develop really good programmers for each team). I am generally a part of final discussion where major decisions are to be taken.
  • I was(am) a marketer: I try to think like a customer and thus I like marketing. KISS and Creative destruction are my major tools while developing or reviewing products. Online marketing is still a new domain for many of us, I keep sharing my experience with everyone involved.
  • Documenter I am converting myself as the chief documenter for the company where we can document the Company pulses (both high and low). We use a wiki based documentation platform.

There are more points but it is already 1:30 am (IST) for me and I think I should give my body some rest. If you think that you are born differently, then you can contact me at ajiissac(at)gmail.com and we can together enjoy the luxury of experimentations at Grmtech (success is a guarantee, Read point 7).

Before I go to bed here is a snippet (1 slide) of the presentation on “Leadership”:-

  1. Be a Mentor not a boss.
  2. Make yourself approachable.
  3. Make Grmtech a university not a company.
  4. Appreciate your team members.
  5. Give the credit and take the blame.
  6. Optimization of work.
  7. 1 Experiment a day keeps no success away.

(complete and detailed presentation will be uploaded soon)

Update on 23rd Dec 2006
I took the second class on Leadership and summary goes like

  1. Self discipline – Instruct vs Inspire
  2. Transformational vocabulary – Optimism Ratio
  3. Battle Vs War – Winning both but not focus the battle.
  4. Problems or communication gaps – 90/10 principle
  5. Guess ?

(This was an instant class before we press the restart button for Grmtech. We are shifting to our new office on Jan 1, 2007.)

Posted on

Say aaaaa! and go through the links

My earlier post on dental checkup did create a fear cloud for few and this post is an attempt to clear it. Today I had my second appointment with the dentist for scaling. Scaling ?????????? As a maths graduate I had my own definition for this word. Scaling is done to clean up things which are not good for oral health. I advice you to go for a dental checkup and if needed a scaling too costing approx Rs 500 (no I am not getting any commission from dental association of India for this post). Also you can go through http://www.dentalhealthindia.com/patient.htm for a life long bindaas muskan.

say aaaaa

Say aaaaaaaaaaaa! (now this sounds more comfortable that earlier days).

Posted on

My Dentist said how, why and hmm

As I said in my previous post (Do give it a look, it is about “Why people leave company?” by Azim Premji and Dr.Gopalkrishnan,Chairman TataSons). I went to meet a dentist. As many other I hate to visit dentist and you can call it a phobia. Finally after some pressure from my parent I decided to visit “The Gentle Dental Center” run by Dr Rajesh Venkatesh, B.D.S, DPH(DENT.) Australia. He is supposedly one of the best. He can only be met with an appointment. I had taken this appointment some two weeks earlier.

His Junior doctor made the initial checkup and gave the report to him. He enter the room and said, “How, why and hmm…”. “Aji How are you managing”, “why did you neglect it” and “hmm… you need a long treatment”. According to him my condition is no better than that of Bihar Roads.

Btw I really liked his cell which was running some good gadgets and if I am not wrong then it had windows XP professionals. It could show me some demos of bridging, root canals and so on.

tooth and dentist

There are eight tooth that needs special attention, one root canal, one bridge, 3 or four fill ups and few small patch ups (sorry I forgot the technical terms, hoping to use Google refine results for such browsing, see an example for ear infection where it has refined the results. I will soon write about these refine result algo).

dental checkup

Wish me good luck and DO HAVE REGULAR DENTAL CHECKUPS as a tooth can have cavity in just 90 days.

Posted on

Remebering Good old days

I will carry on my posts with google bot activities. I will be writing about how Google Bot visits your blog without making a cache and how you can force it to make a cache. Let’s experience some lighter part of the life.

Do you know this fellow?
Dinesh Upreti
This is my friend Dinesh, Who recently updated his orkut avatar. This reminded us about last world (2002). I with Dinesh and Mehta stayed back during our vacations to study and to work on idealog. Plans remained plans and we adopted a different timetable.

Dinesh says
“I can’t forget that incident. “Brazil fans.. good”… Yar that stay at hostel is still in momory. Mehta,me and u.. watching movies,play tt,basket ball, and mehta and me playing fifa.. heavy breakfast.. Pramod kee 4KG ka ekkk mango .. Where is Pramod.. are u listening this.. Get me that mango ”

I with Mehta decided to support Brazil.
Aji Issac

I wrote back to Dinesh’s scrapbook (Lazy to rewrite)
“haan yaar, woh din be din the, aur rathe rathe. Sleeping till 11, then tea and then back to TV room for football matches. Lunch and back to tv room, evening Mango juice, basketball court and then movies. After movie sometimes to GP at night. We stayed back to study but I wonder if we even dared to do that :).

I remember the notices against us to vacate the rooms and after accepting the Brazillian protocol we were respected as Fans :). Pramod ki kahaniya, Warden Maam ke saath breakfast. Chal yaar its already 12:00, I am off for the day and for the night.”

Those were some good days of life. Remembering all those times.

Posted on

my Bday Pics

If you are thinking that 5th sep only can be celebrated as Teachers day then you are wrong as we celebrated onam too. Now if you are thinking that on 5th Sep only we can have two celebration, teachers day and onam, then again you are wrong as I celebrated my Bday too :).

It was really fun, getting phone calls from that very 12 am, smses, emails, forums. This year there was an addition, orkut wishes. Thanks to everyone for all the wishes and prayers. At Office I celebrated it with my colleague Sourav. At night I had special onam dinner that day.

Continue reading “my Bday Pics”

Posted on

My 3 years with Grmtech

(I am no more associated with Grmtech)
Three years with Grmtech

It was long journey, a true learning experience with some failures and more success. If I look back, I can still recall 9th Aug 2003 when I joined Grmtech for some extra money. By then I was working in Alumnus Software Limited, another great company to work. I made through alumnus after 5 rounds of interview. I was enjoying the life at alumnus with some quality work on Prof Jenkins (an e-learning tool), Mobile games based on J2ME, Java based application to convert static pages to dynamic pages (I was very happy to complete this tool, truly a great tool) and good documentation challenges with Automata. When I loved working harder there, my pocket did not allow me to carry the job without money. I then submitted applications at Alumnus for money but I could not get enough to support my traveling and expenses (fair enough as I was just a summer trainee). I then decided to work on additional projects through our four member group Idealog to earn some extra money. Then Sherry (another member of Idealog, who is now in Symantec) informed me about a job offer at Grmtech, which he came to know through Kolkata Linux group. I decided to apply casually and surprisingly I was called for an interview and more surprisingly I got selected with a bond of one year.

Once I informed all the friends about my selection in a company called Grmtech (which was then a virgin company for all the Nimcians) I got mixed reactions esp. due to the bond factor. Somehow I decided to join Grmtech after some good thought. My plan was to Work for 3 to 4 months to earn some money for a Sony T610.

I started working for Grmtech right on 9th Aug 2003, exactly three years back. Next 4 to 5 months were not easy for me as addition to Grmtech tasks I had to complete my projects at Alumnus (which I did), had to finish my trimester classes, projects and exams (which I did and scored good marks too 🙂 ). I never thought my professional relationship with Grmtech would last this long, I am happy it did. This three years I have made many transitions, from a programmer to a manager, from a manager to a leader, from tech field to marketing and recently to HR. I do not know money wise how much I have earned as I could have tried and fetched a job of 25k then but one thing is sure that I have earned and learned many qualities. I will always be thankful to our seniors. They have always shared their experience to help me make better decisions. After working with them I have started respecting experience. It was a great experience to work with many Grmtech members. I must thank God for all His blessings and this great opportunity to work at Grmtech as a leader. Next month Grmtech will be shifting to a better office, looking forward to the next phase of my life.