Just Google it!!!

One of my friends' wife went to a Yahoo both in one of the IT job fairs and met a friend. In front of the entire Yahoo booth, she said "Don't worry about the address, I will GOOGLE IT". You can imagine the reaction there but then was she wrong? I told my friend this story and he added, most probably, even the Yahoo people might be saying the same thing. Google is famous, hello, good morning, this can come only from someone who has come directly from the stone age. Is this dependency on google, just dependency or over dependency. Why is it that one single day is not spent without google? You need someone's address, google it, you need to learn about something interesting, google it, you are searching for a new job or want to know about a job profile, google it, if you need to find about nearest joint to hang out, google it again. World has become smaller, is it because I can google anything in this world to know what is happening around? I am a regular reader of News, ask me where, obviously Google.

This, my friends leads me to a new word, derived from Globalization called Googalization...is it the same thing? Can there be one day, one single day without Google? If you also think the same way as I do then feel free to comment or atleast vote for the poll here...Happy Googling!!!

Social Networking

I have an account on Orkut, Linkedin, Facebook, Myspace and many others where I have already forgotten my ids. On Orkut I have all my school, engineering, MBA and office friends from India. I generally use this to say hi, hello and to be in touch with people. Facebook is good when I need to waste my time and play with some applications. Mostly my overseas friends are my group on Facebook and Myspace. I spend a lot of time on Linkedin, especially the answers section where I read answers of my interest and also try and answer or add value to the questions where I could. I think on Linkedin, people have maintained a professional level and they use it only for professional social networking. I could meet someone in the US through Linkedin and later could also help that person arranging an interview at my company. Not only that, I could get in touch with this person whom I have offered to help in promoting her new company in various social forums. I forgot, to add to all this, I have also become a regular visitor of Yahoo Answers which I think is a good forum if you are looking for something specific as people would have definitely either asked or answered over your specifics.

So what is this fuss about social networking right now. I know people who are sick and tired of social networks and would like to stay away from these. Is it okay to be away from the so called social networking phenomenon.

I think, in today's day it is very important that one is quite connected in order to survive. Competition is tough and world has become a battle field where everyone has to fight their own battles. As Thomas Friedman puts in his book "The World is Flat", earlier there was a time when Countries opened up and people used to think global at a country level, then came the era where people started thinking about companies from global stand point and finally now is the day when people have started looking at individuals from global perspective. Having said this, one should realize the importance of global connections and the kind of information a person can share and hence recieve through social networking.

The underlining art of social networking is give and take. One might not get anything unless one gives. Start giving first and then one point witll definitely come when it will be time to take rewards. Right now social networking is the buzz and all should be a part of it whether they like or they don't!!!

Olympics Torch

There are many questions on Olympics torch on Yahoo Answers, people are inquisitive. What is the protest all about? People are blocking the torch relay in most of the cities against something. That something is anger over China’s human rights record, its grip on Tibet and support for Sudan despite years of bloodshed in Darfur. There was distress in Paris and people here in San Fransisco also protested for 'Free Tibet'. How fair is it to protest against something political in a event related to sports? Although China is the common point.

Most of the answers that I gave on Yahoo Answers were regarding the possibility of Australia winning the gold in swimming to trigger discussion on Olympics rather than talking about something political. Its time to move on from the protests and focus on the games.

Conferences: Road so far!

Feb, 2005 was an important month and the reason for recruiting about 7 of us from our campus early enough to work on the annual strategy summit. Full of excitment and with twinkle in eye, we all set out for the wonderful Ramoji Film City, Hyderabad, the venue for the conference. We were supposed to live there for the next three days. All of us were divided in various teams, the speakers management, content management, network and system, services (general services, in our organization they are known as corporate services), sessions management, team management and last but not the least was entertainment. I was with the content management and entertainment teams and it was fun. Lot of organizing, team work, time management, content and speakers are some of the necessary ingredients to ensure successful conference is what I learnt. Obviously the conference was fantastic with big shots like Arun Shourie, Deepak Chaudhary, Krishna Palepu, Robin Sharma as some of the key speakers. Shankar Mahadevan and Boman Irani were the people to entertain. Ultimate hit!!! I have come a long way as immediately in September, 2005 I became a key part of the annual alliance conference. Later I was a part of the strategy summit for two continuous years and was also a key member in the second alliance conference.

After working for so many conferences and sleepless nights, obviously, right now I am proud to work with the non profit organization TiE in conducting the largest conference for Entrepreneurship TiEcon which is conducted in the silicon valley in this May. I am truly excited and it is fun to leverage the experience of working for conferences.