Ladakh Snaps

Here are the Ladakh snaps!!
There are a few more snaps in this web-album.. and the story follows soon, after I move to biryani-land :-)

Snaps of the ISB Campus

A few more snaps in this web-album

Graduation Snaps

Here are some snaps from our convocation rehearsal, the class photo-session and the convocation ceremony.

More snaps here

the stage is set

shine on you...

crossing swords

with my parents

our class is too big for a single snap

walking in to the makeshift auditorium...

... and Mr Tee poses for the camera

Back to Term-2: A crash course in macroeconomics

Graduated!!

oops! I threw my hat too high!

hat throwing: take-2

waiting for the snaps to be burnt to CD... didn't anyone study Service Ops Management?

ISB's class of 2007: the final handshake

Placement Story

When watching TV last night, I hit upon CNN-IBN playing this news snippet:




To quote from the text version from CNN-IBN's site

Five students from the prestigious Indian School of Business have bagged international jobs worth Rs one crore annually with the highest clocking Rs 1.2 crore.

Five crorepatis? Well, sure 416 is a big class, but I didn't know it was big enough for me to miss meeting (or even knowing) these five classmates of mine.


Update [17 April 2007]
After intense speculation, some friends of mine & I did come up with five possibilities who could have hit the one-plus mark. So I (probably) do know these five classmates of mine.

Comment on an earlier post

I received a pretty strongly worded comment on one of my earlier posts titled Tale of two networks I thought it deserved the attention of another full post.

Here goes the comment by Mr Anonymous (or maybe Ms Anonymous):

Your stand about viral marketing in Tagged.com is a clear stupidity. It's still at your own discretion whether you want to send invitation to the list in your addressbook.

Haven't you wonder that it just makes easier for you to send invitation to your friends. If you think about blogging something , think twice before posting it.

Hmm... it looks like I touched someone's nerve there.

OK, Mr Anonymous, please look at another post of mine - First Gazzag, now Tagged & Facebox. Now you say it is at the user's discretion whether to send invitation to the list in his/her addressbook. Then please explain to me how to avoid the screen that I've listed in Step 3 which not only asked me for my hotmail password, but also refused to allow me to go ahead unless I typed the password in. It takes quite a bit of ingenuity to bypass this step - something that the average hotmail/yahoo user would not be able to do - therefore it is no longer at the user's discretion as to whom to invite.

Your last question was if it doesn't just makes easier for me to send invitation to my friends? No, it does not. It just adds to the spam in my friends' mailboxes. And I detest spam, especially if it goes out in my name without my explicit intention.

Graduated

We graduated on a sunny Saturday morning under a lot of glare. Proud parents, smiling guests, excited faculty - it must be the most memorable day for most of my classmates.

Huge posters saying "Graduation - Class of 2007" hung on either sides of the door of a makeshift auditorium. And when we entered it, we were welcomed by a roar that still rings in my ears. I'd seen a lot of videos where a person walks down through an eagerly anticipating crowd and when I experienced that for myself, I did feel like a celebrity, even though it was for a tiny fleeting moment.

Well, I am an MBA now. I did enjoy the one year I spent at b-school and learned a few things along the way. Maybe I could have learned a lot more. Nevertheless, I'm happy, and my parents are proud.

Going offline

My laptop loses network connectivity tomorrow. So, I guess this'll be my last post from ISB. We have our convocation this weekend.. finally I'll be an MBA. Reminds me, I ought to change my "about me" description.

What's next for me? A few weeks in Bangalore; then about five days in Leh (really looking forward to this one); another week in Bangalore; and then I return to full-time employement in Hyderabad.

Project Discotheque

Here's a snap I had posted to section C about a classmate of ours.

The person on the right once acted in a movie called DiscoDancer. The one on the left used to work for Cisco. We let our logic take a hop-step-and-jump from these facts, and end up naming the person on the left as Disco (it doesn't matter what Disco's real name is - don't ask, and I won't tell).

While the name Disco is reasonably popular within our class at ISB, I am getting worried that his name isn't getting recognised among our alumni network. What would happen if subsequent batches at ISB don't recognise him as Disco? It'd be such a shame... we're talking about a missed legacy here.

So, here is my prescription for correcting this problem. Let's do a googlebomb :-)

To quote wikipedia,

Because of the way that Google's algorithm works, a page will be ranked higher if the sites that link to that page use consistent anchor text. A Google bomb is created if a large number of sites link to the page in this manner

Currently, if you google with the search phrase Disco + Cisco + ISB, Disco's blog shows up as the second search result.


If you just search for Disco + ISB, his blog is the 21st.

To me, these search results are unacceptable.

The objective of Project Discotheque is as follows - get the ranking of Disco's blog up and higher in Google's ranking for the search phrase "Disco" :-) Within a week of this announcement, Disco's blog should be the first search result for the phrase "Disco Cisco ISB" on google, yahoo and msn search. Within a month, the blog should be the first search result for the phrase "Disco ISB".

So, if you're interested in helping out, here's what you can do. If you are a blogger, or you maintain your own website, please make a link to http://isb2007.blogspot.com/ using the anchor text as "Disco".

Oh, and if you have any other suggestions, please do let me know.

done with it

This time last year, I was dreading my last day at work. And today, I'm done with my last examination at ISB; nothing left but the convocation next weekend.

Yep, the roller-coaster is over.

And the emptiness will sink in pretty soon.

A Tip

For the incoming batch at ISB, here's a tip:

Beware of the funnel.

But if you are really adventurous, then maybe...

Losers' Lessons from World Literature

Here's a small sequence of events in the book Asterix and the Chieftain's Shield

The defeat of a proud Gaul


The place of defeat gets a bad name

..and the attitude sticks, even among the commoners
In the legend, it says "An attitude which has persisted down the centuries, with the result that scene of the Gauls' defeat by Caesar is still unknown. A regrettably chauvinist state of affairs."

It's a trifle sad the Caribbean Islands are already well-charted territory, else we could forget about the battles of Trinidad & Tobago just as easily as the Gauls forgot Alesia.

Why did India lose to Bangladesh?

Question: why did India lose the opening match against Bangladesh?
Answer: because this is how they spent their practise session.

Scarcity & Spam

Question: How does a real-estate broker attempt to speed up the pace at which he could close a deal?
Answer: He creates a perceived scarcity in the mind of the buyer. As soon as he has explained the nuts and bolts of the deal, you can be sure the first thing he's going to say is "I've got two other buyers who're looking to lease this place." That the demand is perceived to be greater than supply will automatically make the buyer willing to pay a higher price. Of course, knowing about this little gimmick of real-estate brokers doesn't help much - we are not 100% rational.. we somehow can't seem to account for this gimmick.

Real-estate is an essential, going by the roti-kapda-makan philosophy. Others may have lists longer than that - you could count education, telephone connections, maybe even Internet connections. But why would anyone consider orkut accounts as an essential? Well, let's take a look at this e-mail I received:

from: (name hidden)reply-to (email hidden)
to my friends
date 20-Mar-2007 23:05
subject Message from Orkut
mailed-by orkut.bounces.google.com

HEY ITS DIANNA, FROM THE DIRECTOR OF ORKUT,EVERYBODY SORRY FOR THEINTERRUPTION BUT ORKUT IS CLOSING THE SYSTEM DOWN BECAUSE TOO MANYBOTTERS ARE TAKING UP ALL THE NAMES, WE ONLY HAVE 57 NAMES LEFT, IF YOUWOULD LIKE TO CLOSE YOUR ACCOUNT, DONT SEND THIS MESSAGE, IF YOU WANT TO KEEP YOUR ACCOUNT ,SEND THIS MESSAGE TO EVERYONE ON YOUR LIST. THIS IS NOT A JOKE, YOU'LL BE SORRY IF YOU DONT SEND IT. THANKS DIRECTOR OF ORKUT, TIM BUISKI. WHOEVER DOESNT SEND THIS MESSAGE, YOUR ACCOUNT WILL BE DEACTIVATED AND IT WILL COST YOU $ 10.00 A MONTH TO USE IT.
This message was sent to you by xxxx. To see xxxx's profile click:http://www.orkut.com/Profile.aspx?uid=xxxxx

For a moment, let's forget that this is a hoax. Let's also forget that Tim Buiski has been "the director" of bebo.com, yahoo.com and msn, before taking over as director of orkut ;-)

Now, the underlying principle of this hoax was scarcity. The email speaks of something that is running out, and the reader somehow is able to connect with that. But why wouldn't this sender consider whether or not the item being spoken of is an essential or not. It doesn't really matter if my orkut account expires - it doesn't really affect me. And I can hazard a guess that most of my friends don't treat their orkut account as an essential.

So, question for the day: why do hoaxes thrive? And why do they thrive as much on the Internet?

If you have any pointers, please leave a comment. I shall try to collate them and write down my own thoughts in a future post.

We were discussing cricket with Prof Montealegre at a small get together that we had last Thursday. The conversation went something like this:

Prof Montealegre : So, I hear it takes a whole day to play a game of cricket.. that's quite fantastic!
ISBian Cricket Buff #1:Sir, there is another format that lasts five days.
Prof Montealegre : What! Oh.. that's amazing! So, which are the good teams?
ISBian Cricket Buff #1: Australia is the best. South Africa's good . India is good too. Pakistan are alright, but they play their best against India.
Prof Montealegre : Really?
ISBian Cricket Buff #2: Yeah, Indo-Pak games are very sought after. The roads are empty when there's an India-Pakistan match. Everyone takes off, nobody works.. and there are firecrackers if we win.
Prof Montealegre : Hmm.. very interesting. So, when is India's first game?
ISBian Cricket Buff #1: Day after tomorrow. We're playing Bangladesh.
Prof Montealegre : Okay, are they a good team?
ISBian Cricket Buff #2: Well, they're new, they have a lot to learn. They'll learn from us.
Prof Montealegre : Hmm.. nice, nice.

I hope the Professor has followed up on the latest.

Tale of two networks

I think I'm getting slightly obsessed with this topic of web-based social networks, so I solemnly swear this'll be my last post on this subject. For a while, in any case :)

Some people believe that it takes a maximum of six people to link up any two people in the world. This is a familiar theory called the six degrees of separation. Mathematically, this makes sense. Let's say every person on earth knows 500 people. I don't think 500 is too high a number - I have 472 people on my orkut list, which include seven people I haven't ever met (they could be fake for all I know), but I think I know more people who don't have an orkut account. The 500 number means that through six other people, I could theoretically form links with 500^5 = 31250000000000, which is definitely greater than the population of the earth. Yes, there might be repeats, but there's a good chance I could cover everyone. At least that's what the theory says. But here's where I disagree -- there might be some clusters of people which are so remotely connected from the rest of the world, that they might not have a link. This is especially true with tribes that have been untouched by other civilised humans.. so it's difficult for me to believe in the Six Degrees theory outright. Nevertheless, if you keep increasing the degrees - from six to eight to maybe 15 - you are bound to connect most humans on the planet. For me, the more interesting fact about the "Six Degree of Separation" theory isn't in the number six but that most of us are connected to each other, most of us know each other. At least indirectly.

Let's draw a parallel to this in the Internet space - quite arbit, but please bear with me. Let's say that email addresses are the equivalent of humans. Well, they are born, they live and then they die. And while they're living, they contact other email addresses. How many degrees separate any two email addresses in the world? Maybe six, maybe more, maybe infinite (you do have closed loop intranets where all email addresses are internal to the network - pretty much like the tribes that have been left in isolation). If I assume the equivalent of knowing another person is an email sent from on email address to another, how many degrees would separate any two email addresses on the Internet?

Here's what I'm getting at. There are two networks - one of humans and one of email addresses. These two networks are separate, they are distinct, and they should not be confused for each other. If I am serious about Web 2.0 in any form, I have to draw a distinction between Internet users and the means they adopt to communicate on the Internet.

What orkut & yahoo! 360 and Linked in have done is to differentiate between the two networks. On Linked in, you don't invite an email address to hook up with you, you invite a person to join your circle. Even on orkut, if I ignore the malicious bots created by crackers (crackers, not hackers), it is people that I am connecting with. When the programmers behind this system forgets that he's trying to connect people and not email addresses, you end up getting a system like tagged.com. The website starts trying to find more and more email addresses to send spam invitations to in the vain hope that viral marketing will work. Well, sir, it doesn't. If gazzag.com were to get hold of my addressbook and sent invitation to everyone on it, they'd send invites to email addresses like that of the placement office at ISB. They won't be inviting the people working in the placement office, but the placement office itself - now what kind of a social network is that?

Lesson for running a web 2.0 site that bases its growth on viral marketing - let the users decide whom to invite and whom not to. That would be social; cracking through users' addressbook is not.