Highs and Lows
Posted by Guhan | Filed under thoughts
The last 2 months have taken me on a joy ride with lot of highs and lows! It all started off when certain plans did not materialize and I was at a all time low, I even started writing up a very negative blog post, but decided not to. After all, I did not need more negativity. But all of that changed when I participated in the University hack day and got to meet up with a lot of students. Its always a rush when you can have a good discussion with students. And I think coming from a big company helps, they always tend to listen to you more eagerly :-)
Then there was another high, I won an award in office. But the bigger high was when loads of friends, colleagues and family wished me the best and told me I deserved it. The family making it to the award function was icing on the cake.
My profile made it to Yahoo! careers site and was also the photo for Yahoo! technology in the careers site, another high.
Me and my wife love traveling, and a holiday together is pending for a long time now. We have just been planning the last couple of months, but nothing finalized as yet. Another low.
Then in my cricket, I had a good start to the year, scoring a good 50 in a corporate tournament match. Then a series of low scores and again I started feeling low about my game. Recently, i seem to have found my form back, and it was a thrill winning the match against Wipro this weekend, and I am happy i contributed.
Its that time of the year when all salaried slaves expect their increments. The industry has not been doing good, and last year, there were no hikes. This year, the appraisal was again a low. Was really disappointed with whole thing. Another low.
I tweeted that may be the outcome of all this has to be “change”. Time will tell
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. :-)
IISC University Hack Day
Posted by Guhan | Filed under Events
I was part of yet another Hack U. This was a first for me because it was at Indian Institute of science and all the students there are PhD students and doing heavy research work. It was a good experience talking with them because their view information and computer science is completely different. They are more focused on the science, algorithms, efficiency and more core problems. Me on the other hand am more about the applications and the end user experience side of things. So the discussions with the students was really interesting.
I blogged about this on YDN, so check out my YDN blog post
200
Posted by Guhan | Filed under Sport
Wednesday, 24th Feb 2010 was the day when the world witnessed 200 runs scored by the greatest batsman to play Cricket, Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar. Standing 5 feet 5 inches tall, Sachin is a class apart. Ask any bowler in world cricket, he would have surely had a night mare or 2 about bowling to Sachin.
Today, I had to miss office and a team outing because of a bad cold and an infected throat. But no regrets after watching this stunning innings. I was glued to the TV watching Sachin toy with the South African bowling. Not even a single chance, not a single slog shot nor a sign of nervousness during his innings. 36 years old and close to 20 years in professional cricket, Sachin was as hungry for runs as anybody. There was great article in Times of India by Rahul Dravid about today’s cricketers lacking the hunger to succeed and how they have way too many opportunities to fail. All of the new breed of cricket, the so called Young guns can sit down and watch this Sachin innings at least once a week. They will learn what it means to have passion for a game.
Even after batting for 50 overs, running hard for his runs, Sachin walks out on to the field encouraging his bowlers and settling down in first slip. Today’s cricketers are plagued by injuries and comforts that even if they were to score 50 runs, they choose to get a massage and allow for a replacement fielder to take their place.
There was a board in Australia held up by a fan that read “I have seen god, he opens the batting for India”, such is the respect Sachin commands. Never dogged by controversy, never got into an argument with a bowler, no fights, just goes about his business of scoring runs. I think Sachin is the only sportsman for whom an entire nation prays to do well. There was a phase in his career when people doubted his talent, and suggested that it was time he retire. People expect so much of him, I cant even begin to imagine the pressure he would need to handle every time he takes guard. And its just unbelievable that he most of the times lives up to the insane expectations of the cricket fans, and has done so for 2 decades with humility, passion and such style. He is undoubtedly a great role model. He is one batsman every bowler in the world wants to bowl to, just so that they might have a chance to get him out and go into the history books, but at the same time, have night mares the moment he takes guard.
Every time I bat in the cricket matches I play, I just wish I get to hit the ball as well as Sachin would. It would be hard for anyone to match Sachin’s talent, even harder to even come close to his achievements and all most impossible to be a better ambassador of cricket. All hail Sachin Tendulkar, the master blaster.
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“.
