Yahoo! Ratna !
Posted by Guhan | Filed under thoughts
I have been working in Yahoo! for almost 5 years now. Its been a really great time here. Yahoo! has a very open and informal culture, and are also the things I like about working here. You can really enjoy the work atmosphere.
Yahoo! has many cool awards they give out. The You Rock!, Yahoo! Ratna and Yahoo! Super Star, in the same order of importance.
This year, I was given the Yahoo! Ratna. It was a wonderful moment for me. Earlier I had won the You Rock! award as well. May be Super star is next. :-)
Caged Butterflies
Posted by Guhan | Filed under thoughts
I am right now in Delhi, to participate in the Techshare India 2010 Conference at Habitat center. Today I gave a talk for the Technology and Accessibility track titled “Fixing the Developer Mindset“.
On my flight from Bangalore to Delhi, for some reason I was remembering the first time I went on stage and faced a big audience. This was during my 11th Standard annual day celebrations. My mom use to tell me that the actual first time I went on stage was to perform in a play for Christmas during my kindergarten, but I have only seen videos of that, dont remember anything. My mom tells me that I was to play a different character, but had to be changed because I was too scared to deliver the dialog. In the annual day event, I was chosen to be the Master of ceremonies, and even there I was not the first choice. I never wanted to face the huge audience. But as it turned out, I did compeer that year. I remember I had stage fright. I was petrified with the idea of standing up and uttering words in front of a massive crowd. The butterflies in my stomach were going berserk, and I clearly remember that there were times when a chill ran down my spine and blew over the stomach butterflies rattling them even more.
A week before the annual day, a friend who was originally suppose to go up on stage backed out because he was shorter than the female co-anchor and that felt awkward to him. So the teacher in charge forced me to step in and I reluctantly agreed. In retrospect I completely enjoyed the experience, the various nights spent with 5 of my close friends, memorizing the lines, editing it, changing the script, fighting over lines, confusions, extremely long Kannada words and chaos. I was popular in school ( ahem ahem :-) ) because I was part of the very successful cricket team. I was standing behind the curtain, sweating in anxiety. The curtain went up and I froze. It was a auditorium filled with screaming school kids, shouting out my name. My Classmates and made it a point to go up on the balcony and shout out my name even louder. I could not believe I volunteered to do this. I forgot everything we worked on for the whole week, I had the script in my hand, but that was just a moist lump of paper by then. My co-anchor nudged me to speak up, and I frankly dont remember a word I said.
Later, In college, there were a few college events I participated in, and like always was really nervous to speak into a mic. I had this strange thing in my head that my voice did not suit the way I look. I always wanted to be one of those great speakers, people who were clear and insightful in their talks, people who could handle the crowd really well. I use to admire how easy the lecturers found it to teach in a class. The very thought of standing in front of an unruly engineering student group gave me the shivers. I attended a few conferences and a few pre placement talks from various IT companies coming for campus hiring. I always noted how well those guys presented and the confidence with which they spoke. I had almost made up my mind that it was a talent that cannot be acquired, but one that you have to be born with.
I started working in Sify Ltd, Chennai. One always hears how the corporate industry is cruel to people who are not all rounders and have bad communication skills. I never considered my self to be bad with communication, so I decided to force myself to get over the stage fear. The first opportunity I got at work was to present a project design to senior executives in the company. Even when making the slides for the presentation, I kept re-assuring my self that it was just a small crowd and I should not be worrying. The presentation went off well, and for the first time, a senior exec told me that I have good communication skills. So I decided then that what ever chance I get or where ever I saw an opportunity, I would push myself to present. In quick succession, I got another opportunity to be part of the Freshers Induction team, which meant that I had to deliver a couple of orientation classes. I remember me actually being excited to present to freshers because I knew that I know more than they do about Sify. I started being a regular in these orientation sessions, and I was getting more confident.
When I joined Yahoo!, I had a lot of real geeky colleagues who were all into attending and speaking at conferences. I went with them to many conferences and Bar camps. In a Computer Society of India conference, I once again got a chance to present to a big audience. This was a first for me because I had never spoken at a public conference. In that conference, a junior student from the college I passed out from, NIE Mysore heard my talk and contacted me to be a guest speaker at the NIE technology festival. I was really excited to be able to go back to college and speak in front of my lecturers and juniors. It was such a rush getting on the main college auditorium stage and speaking. I had a couple of friends sitting in the audience to listen to my talk, and they told me that I had presented really well.
The other big presentation landmark for me was the time I had to speak in the Frontend Engineers Conference in Yahoo! Head quarters in Sunnyvale. This was the first time that I had to travel abroad to make a presentation. This was a dream come true of sorts. On the day of the presentation, it was both a sense of excitement and butterflies in the stomach. But I remember being confident of doing well. Since then, I have been making a lot of presentations in conferences and have been conducting a lot of technical training inside Yahoo!. After 5 years at Yahoo! I am informally called a Yahoo! developer Network Evangelist, constantly trying to evangelize Yahoo! technology in the IT industry. I have been part of Yahoo! Hack Day program as well, and this has given me the opportunity to speak in leading educational institutions. Yahoo! has been great because it has given me these opportunities over the years, and using the brand-name I have been able to get more attention as well.
I continue to be anxious and some time nervous before a Talk or presentation, the metaphorical butterflies fluttering wings still tickle my abdomen walls, but I dont feel them as much, making me a lot more confident and willing to get up on stage and deliver a talk. This is perhaps what I want to call “Caged Butterflies in my stomach“.
Hack U !
Posted by Guhan | Filed under thoughts
I am a Hacker. Hacking is a good thing, and being a hacker is cool.
I do not break into financial system, I do not acquire military secrets nor do I make truck loads of money. I do not ‘Crack’
Yahoo! can take a lot of pride in establishing a sense of positiveness and creativity around the word Hack. Yahoo! has been promoting ‘HackDay‘ as a cool new event where creative minds, geeks and passionate developers come together and do some amazing stuff in 24 hours.
Hack Day till about 2 years ago, was an internal Yahoo! event to keep its engineers minds fresh and promote ground up innovation. In the 5 years at Yahoo! I have enjoyed the Hack days here and have won a couple of them in Bangalore.
It was such a great success inside the company, that Yahoo! decided to make it an open event where engineers and geeks from all over the industry came together for a day, shared thoughts, innovated and had a great time with like minded folk. The ‘Open Hack Days’ were a great success.
Hack days are like an open challenge to every geek to test their creativity and speed in putting some things together and solve a problem in a way they see fit. Creating something that works and solves a problem within 24 hours is a real rush and goes to show that if an engineer works on something he/she is passionate about, work will just get done in amazing amount of time.
From Open Hack days, Yahoo! has started this trend of University hack days, where a group of Yahoo! evangelists go out to a reputed university and conduct a Hack event for all the students. Catch ‘em young !
I have been a part of 5 University Hack days in India, the most recent one being IIIT Hyderabad.
More about that event in my YDN Blog post
Over all I think its a great concept. Its great to be a hacker, its bad to be a cracker !!
When it comes to travel, there is always more than one place I have to be !
Posted by Guhan | Filed under thoughts
I have had a fair share of travel, personally and professionally. I love traveling and seeing new places. But I have come to realize that when it comes to travel, there is always some other place I have to be at the same time.
This week, kicks off another travel and events bonanza !! First I head out to IISc Bangalore today evening for the Hack U kick off there. I am going to talk about how “Every resource on the web is a data source”. I get back late night, and have a early morning flight to Hyderabad, to start off the University Hack day at IIIT H . Its going to be 3 days of innovation, talks, discussions, ideas, creativity and coding fun. I get back on 24th and will have to decide between going to Mysore for a event and going to Chennai to attend 2 weddings. The coming weekend, I head out to Nandi Hills for a company off-site aimed at making better leaders out of the members of the group :-) Immediately after getting back, I need to be in Mysore to play the first match of the 1st division league cricket match. The weekend after that, I need to choose between going to another company off-site or to another friends wedding in Calicut. The 2nd week of Feb, I head off to Delhi to speak at the Techshare India 2010 Barrier break conference. During the same time, I need to decide whether to head off for a day to Ludhiana to attend another good friends wedding!
There are a couple of training sessions in office which I need to juggle in between all of this, ton of deliverables for the project I am working on, a couple of design proposals to make and couple of dinners to go out with my wife :-)
This is not the first time this is happening, last time I traveled to USA on business, I was forced to decide between attending a conference there and attending a close friends wedding back home. When I was in Jordan on business, I almost missed my dads 60th Birthday celebrations, managed to land up in Mysore a day before the event.
May be its just coincidence or may be its just that I notice these things more when there are many things to do and places to be.
Guess all this will just help me improve my time management and delegation skills. Experience ++
Wish me luck
Death and Violence
Posted by Guhan | Filed under thoughts
The end of 2009 saw the passing of one of Kannada movie’s favorite stars, Vishnuvaradhan. A close friend of mine, Vijay (Twitter Vijay) has brilliantly expressed the sentiments of a true fan of his blog post. Having been one of the most versatile, talented, stylish and popular actors in the Kannada film industry, he also acted in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam films also.
Vishnuvardhan was born in Mysore and he also breathed his last in Mysore. His body was shifted to National College grounds for the people to pay their last respects. The final cremation was done in Abhimaan Studio located on Mysore Road. The actor was given a grand state funeral attended by his family members, film personalities political leaders and thousands of his fans.
Earlier, another popular kannada film actor and an icon in Karnataka, Dr. RajKumar passed away. Dr. Raj was titled “Natasarvabhouma” meaning “emperor of acting” or lovingly called Annavaru meaning Elder brother.
It sure was a loss to the film fraternity but the other thing common in their deaths was the riots and mob violence that followed. It is just sad that despite both of these legends being well known for their peace loving nature and respect for calm, their so called fans choose to show their grief through mindless violence and damage to property. It is hard to comprehend the rationale behind such acts. News channels covering the events showed mobs in thousands throwing stones, laughing and having a stupidly good time. Dr. Raj’s death had precipitated a city-wide reaction. Following the news of his death, there was major unrest in the city of Bangalore. The then Chief Minister, H.D.Kumaraswamy, later claimed that the violence was instigated by vested political interests. And as always the opposition blamed it on lack of timely arrangements by responsible organizations. Even an unofficial bandh was announced. More than 100 vehicles were burnt and many people killed in mob attacks and police firing.
The last rites for both of them was marred by large scale violence and protests by unruly mobs. Family members pleaded in vain in both occasions. It was very sad to see how Dr. Raj’s sons literally begging for the mobs to calm down. Vishnuvardhan’s wife kept saying how much Vishnu loved peace and would have wished to have a quiet non violent passing. But all this fell on deaf years on both occasions.
For many, I think its just a reason to vent their frustrations. Mob mentality takes over and one stupid act cascades into a full scale riot, loss of property and closing of business. Hapless police trying to control the crowds are targeted. There is absolutely no reason for the riots, its almost assumed that nothing will function in any such event. Every one in the city stay home in fear of violence. Family fear the return of their loved ones. Such state of fear for one persons death is not justified and is the sad reality we all have been forced to tolerate. Icons are remembered for their charm, mass appeal and personality. But circumstances forces us to relate violence and discomfort to the passing of such icons. May their soul rest in peace.
