Tips to dress up your LinkedIn profile: Part 2

Posted on August 17, 2012 by amitbhatnagar

This post is a continuation of an earlier post. Read part 1 here.

Describe your work: A good number of LinkedIn profiles are no more than a listing of job-titles and educational degrees. Make sure that yours is not one of them.As discussed above, your job-title may mean different things in different organizations, and outside your company, people may have no clue on what you are working on. Explain in simple terms what you are doing currently and what you have done in your previous jobs, staying away from company-specific jargon. Be as specific as you can, and focus more on skills that are transferable and applicable outside your current company.
Get recommendations: You may not be Steve Burda (nor is so many recommendations a good idea for most of us), but if have done any good work in past, there must be some people willing to vouch for it. Ask them to write a short recommendation for you. Best time for asking a recommendation is right after you complete a project. From my experience, I know that people certainly remember your good work for a long time, but with time, they tend to forget the specifics, and generic recommendations are not as powerful!
Choose right keywords and skills: Most above tips would be useful when they are looking for you, i.e. the tips focus on how your profile looks when they land on your profile page. This one is about getting featured in search results, when they are not looking specifically for you, but for people like you, i.e. people having specific skills and experience. Since by default, LinkedIn sorts search results by relevance, it is important to ensure that your profile is keyword-rich. These keywords may be a part of your Profile-summary, Specialties, work experience description, or other details. Also, ensure that Skills & Expertise section features has the right skills listed. LinkedIn allows you to add up to 50 skills.
If it is not obvious which skills and keywords you should include, there are two good sources for this. Check out profiles of other people in your domain (or people in your target role). What skills and keywords do their profiles include, and are there any, which actually are your skills too? If yes, you now have some keywords to add to your profile. Another source is especially relevant if you are looking for a job-change. Check out the description of your target jobs, and see what recruiters are looking for. If you do meet those requirements, make sure that right keywords representing these are included in your profile.
One final word on caution here: Write your LinkedIn profile primarily for human readers (i.e. not for bots), and don’t overload it with keywords.
List your online presence: Do you have an active blog ? Are you considered the Subject-Matter Expert on some topics (preferably related to your job-field) on Quora? Do you participate in the Analytics contests on Kaggle or programming projects at Github? If you answered “Yes” to any of these questions, make sure to list these and other relevant portions of your digital footprint under Websites section on your profile.
One thing I have seen is that the default website-labels (“Blog”, “Company Website”, etc) are not attention-grabbing. Customize it to make it more eye-catching and informative. One thing that I observed in Google Analytics for this blog is that the traffic from LinkedIn has certainly increased (though not very significantly) since I changed the label for my website to “Amitbhatnagar.com” from default “Personal Website”. Similarly, something like “My analytics projects on Kaggle” or “My answers on Quora” will certainly get some attention, and give your profile an additional dimension.
Groups: LinkedIn allows you to join up to 50 groups. Joining Groups is a great way to connect to new people and to share/seek knowledge/information. Alumni groups and groups related to your current and past employers are obvious choices, but what would really expand your network in a meaningful is joining interests and skills related groups. Examples of these can be: Product Management, Social Media marketing, etc. Another useful aspect of joining groups is that many members allow other group members to send them messages, and as such, you may be able to contact people outside your immediate network directly without having to upgrade to Premium membership.

Bonus tip : Control your Activity Broadcasts: You can control whether your LinkedIn activity (Profile changes, recommendations, etc) gets shown in their connections news feed. If you haven’t followed Tip 0 (Keeping your LinkedIn profile current) and you suddenly start making massive changes to your profile, your co-workers may know that you are planning to quit, and you may not be comfortable with this. To avoid this, go to Settings -> Privacy Controls -> Turn on/off your activity broadcasts, and un-check the box for Activity Broadcasts (Default is checked)

Which ones of these were missing from your LinkedIn profile? Are there any that you disagree with? (Tip #4 is my best guess for this!) Are there any other tips that you feel are missing? Please share them as comments below.

Tips to dress up your LinkedIn profile: Part 1

Posted on August 16, 2012 by amitbhatnagar

There are two things that I am very passionate about: counseling peers and juniors about higher education/career-planning (I am still in very early stage of my career, but I try to make myself useful wherever I can!) and the power of social media. One place where these two merge is when somebody asks me to review their LinkedIn profile (and this has happened too often in last three years!). Last week, when I helped a close friend with his LinkedIn profile overhaul, I thought it’s perhaps time to get ready a blog-post on things that I usually include in my LinkedIn profile feedback.

These tips are just meant to take your LinkedIn profile from just being present on LinkedIn to having a credible LinkedIn presence. Once you attain this level, you may move to relatively advanced steps, like participating in LinkedIn Q&A, using LinkedIn apps, getting a premium account, etc.

So here are 10 tips not in any particular order, starting with an elementary tip 0.

Tip 0: Keep your profile current, Always: This should be an obvious one, but many, many people ignore it, till they actually have to start hunting for a new job. In today’s connected world, you are always being looked up on LinkedIn. By coworkers, supervisors, recruiters, clients and everybody else!! (Don’t believe me? Start checking “Who’s Viewed Your Profile?” regularly!) And if you haven’t kept your profile updated and are already in job-hunt mode, you may be interested in the Bonus tip at the end of the 10 tips below.

Get a profile picture: Try a quick experiment. Search for your favorite keyword on LinkedIn, and browse through any 2-3 profile out of 10 results on results page. Now, observe which profiles were featured at the top, and which profiles did you instinctively chose to click through. Chances are high that the top profiles were mostly profiles with photos, and if you are like most people, you must have clicked at the profiles with photos and skipped the profiles with no profile picture.
This is exactly what many recruiters will do, when your profile shows up in the results, but has no photo. (BTW, since click-through rate is one of the criteria of sorting results, this may cause your profile to appear even lower in subsequent searches!)
What kind of photos? A professional headshot works best, but this may depend on your target/current industry and function area. For example, for an investment banker or a lawyer, a professional look may be a necessity, but if you are targeting a Silicon valley startup, a less formal pic may work. Of course, avoid party pics or group photos. Use your best judgement, and pick a photo that you are comfortable showing to your manager/recruiter/client.
Get a meaningful “Professional headline”: Other than your profile page, you may appear on different pages on LinkedIn: Search results, groups, Q&A, “People you may know” section for other users etc. At most places, the only things that users will see besides your name are: Your profile pic and “Professional Headline”. So make sure these are good. For most people, the headline is same as their current job-title, which may be okay sometimes. But I believe you are much more than your current job position. Also, many job-titles may hold little meaning outside their organization, and unless your profile visitor knows about your employer, the headline may not convey the right message. For example: a generic title like “Manager at XYZ Corp” tells me nothing, unless I know what managers at XYZ Corp typically do. Something like “Marketing professional with 8+ years of high-tech industry experience” is much better and informative.
And if you are really feeling adventurous and want to make your headline even more attention-grabbing, try something like this:
★ Experienced Search Engine Marketing Consultant ★ Guaranteed ROI ★ Discover Why Companies Hire Me!
I know that not many would be comfortable putting a bold claim like this in their headline. But a headline like this almost guarantees a click-through once you show up in search results. And don’t we want searchers to at least visit our profile, where rest of the details are there!
Grab your Vanity URL: Sign in to LinkedIn and Go to home -> Profile -> View Profile. What URL you see as your “Public Profile” ? Does this follow the default (ugly) format, and look something like this: www.linkedin.com/pub/firstname-middlename-lastname/8/472/f31? If yes, then, it’s time to get a prettier URL for your public-profile.
Try getting one of these formats: firstname-lastname, lastname-firstname, first-initial-lastname or firstname-last-initial. If you have a common name like mine, you may have to use numbers too. (Mine is: http://www.linkedin.com/in/amitbhatnagar1) But this is still much prettier than the default URL. Once you have grabbed your URL, consider using it in the signature for your non-work email, or you may even use it in your resume, if you are looking for a job.
Give your voice to your profile: Most resumes do not use pronouns: bullets are usually led by Action-verbs (“Led a team”, “Conducted a survey.. “, etc.) While writing your LinkedIn profile-summary (and the rest of your profile), consider making your LinkedIn profile distinct from your resume by writing in first person. I personally feel that writing in first person is direct and conversational, and hence, more inline with the style of social media. (I switched to a combination of first person + resume-style 5-6 months ago, and certainly, like it more that way!)
If you are not very comfortable writing in first person or find it a bit boastful, you may stick to resume-style. One style that I am not a fan of is writing in third person. I found profiles written in third person a bit too distant and having an air of fake modesty: You are still boasting about yourself (which is not really wrong if you are honest), but your writing style pretends that what you write is others’ opinion about you!! If you feel that description of your work and abilities would seem more credible in third person, leave that part to your recommenders!
Describe your company/group: For each of your job-positions, consider setting the context for your work by starting with a brief description of the company or the group that you are/working for. If your company is a lesser known entity, this is a must-do! For example: during my MBA, I had an amazing marketing strategy internship with Manheim Auctions, which is the world’s biggest B2B auto-auction company, but since they are into B2B auctions, not many end consumers know about them. I make sure that my profile visitors know the magnitude of the company by including a couple of lines describing Manheim. For my current job, although everyone knows Deloitte Consulting, but not many may specifically know about Deloitte Digital, the service line that I am working with. Again, I include a brief summary of what Deloitte Digital is about before I discuss what I am doing at Deloitte.

Continue reading part 2 of this post here.

In defence of Sachin Tendulkar: Part 2

Posted on February 21, 2012 by amitbhatnagar

Thanks for the support on part 1 of this post. There were some comments, many re-tweets and likes for the original post, but perhaps the best part was when Sachinist.com reached out to me for my permission to republish the blog on their website! Part 1 is now re-published on their website and by now, has 300+ likes! 🙂

Sachin Tendulkar As promised, in the concluding part of the post, I will focus on comparing Sachin with Sachin, i.e. I will compare Sachin’s current form (which Sachin haters are questioning) with his overall career (which even the harshest Sachin-critics can not challenge).

A method to analyze a batsman’s form through the years is to track a running average for 10 innings, i.e. instead of drawing a graph for scores in each innings, an average is calculated for every 10 innings (i.e. 1-10, then 2-11, 3-12 and so on) and a graph is drawn for these running averages. This allows us to take into account fluctuations in a batsman’s form over a period of time and get rid of temporary peaks and troughs that a single double century or a duck may create.

In the graphs below, I have plotted both the career average as well as running average at each point in Sachin’s career. So at any point the running average graph is higher than the career average, you can assume that Sachin is in a very good form (Anything higher than his terrific career average has to be terrific!) and if the running average is below the career graph, perhaps he is relatively (remember, relatively!) out of form.

Check out the above graph and decide if Sachin is really at the lowest point in his career; so low that his critics and many former Cricketers want him to be dropped from the team. Far from it, in fact in ODIs, his current performance is comparable to his overall career (until recently it was higher than his career form).

In tests, though the current performance is lower than the career average graph, it is far from being Sachin’s lowest point in his career. I guess most Sachin fans remember that dreadful word “Endulkar” that was used to describe him being out of form and indicated that he was nearing his career end. As you can see from the graph, that dip in form was quite deep and lasted for a long, long time. But he fought back and showed that he still had a lot of Cricket left in him! I am sure he will bounce back again very soon! (And before you get too hung up on the fact that his test form is below his career form, remember that it is still around 40, which is considered quite decent for most other batsmen!)

Finally, here is another set of snapshots to show that Sachin’s current form is consistent with his complete batting career. The following pie charts compare a breakdown of Sachin’s scores by score-ranges.

In ODI, If you see carefully, the share of non-performance (0-24 runs) and average performances (25-49 runs) has more or less stayed the same. (Combined 68% for the whole career, and 69% for last two years) What has definitely risen is the share of great performances (100+ scores) and extra-ordinary performance (150+scores). Sachin haters, Is that what you call as being terribly out of form?

In test matches, the picture is even clearer. The share of non-performance (<25 runs) has dipped from 44% to 36%. And together below 50 scores, account for just 59% of recent innings as compared to 62% for overall career. The share of centuries has declined a bit (16% versus 17%), but that can hardly be considered an evidence of being in a bad form. This is still a century in every sixth innings!

To conclude, I would again say that I am certainly disappointed with some of his recent showings, but I am sure that he will do what he has always done; he will answer his critics with his bat! He already has almost all batting records in both Tests and ODIs in his kitty, and the hundredth 100 is just another milestone that will come by soon. But as my friend Alok says (and I can not word it better!), “Tendulkar’s greatness lies not in his stats, but in his willingness to carry the nation on his shoulders and not shirk away from responsibilities.”

In defence of Sachin Tendulkar: Part 1

Posted on February 15, 2012 by amitbhatnagar

I think I am gradually becoming a naastik :(

Sachin Tendulkar after scoring ODI Cricket's first double century One of my cousins was a bit concerned on reading the above line as my Facebook status earlier this year (Naastik =”athiest” in Hindi), but those, who know about my love for Cricket, understood what I was referring to. I was referring to my decreasing faith in God of Cricket: Sachin Tendulkar. He has repeatedly faltered, especially in last few months, when Team India needed him to perform miracles. Yes, miracles! After all, that’s what Gods do, and that’s what he was used to be doing in pre-Ganguly era, when he almost single-handedly carried the burden of the whole team. That’s what he was doing when he took India to World Cup semi-final in 1996, Finals in 2003 and finally to being World Champion in 2011!

But lately, he hasn’t been at his Godly-best! He is still doing better than most of his teammates, but he could not prevent India’s 0-4 drubbing in England last summer, and then, again by the same margin in Australia a few days ago. I don’t care much about the 100th hundred, but as an ardent fan, I am concerned that it has been close to a year that he has scored a century, which is the longest he has waited for an international hundred (except for his second hundred way back in 1990.). He has again and again failed to capitalize on good starts (Twice falling in 90’s), and I must admit that I am deeply disappointed in him.

But it should stop at just that! If you want to stop deifying someone, go ahead and strip him off his God status, but at least, recognize his existence as a super-human (or at least a simple human). You don’t need to turn him into a selfish devil. But this is exactly what a number of Cricket experts and fans are doing. I read this article on Cricketnext, and it made me very angry. And the kind of support the article has got from some of the fans (both in the comments section and on Twitter) made me even angrier. They are calling Sachin selfish and claiming that he is overstaying his welcome in international arena. Many want him to retire from ODIs, and a good number want him to quit international Cricket altogether.

I am just a passionate follower of Cricket, not an expert. But since I am a data-driven guy, I thought I could perhaps try to run some numbers to check whether I am just being emotional and supporting my favorite Cricketer blindly. The results didn’t surprise me at all, but I hope they provide some answers to Sachin haters.

All the statistics below are based on raw data sourced from Statsguru of ESPNCricinfo. Except for the first graph, which does not include the Ind-Aus ODI on Feb 14, 2012, all graphs are current, as of today (Feb 15, 2012). First three graphs are based on data from last two years, while the last two (will be covered in the next part of this post) span Sachin’s entire career.

Since Sachin is overstaying his welcome in international Cricket, at least two or three (maybe more) Indian Cricketers must be consistently performing better than him. Right? Unfortunately, data does not support this.

Let us begin with data from ODI over last two years. Most people are questioning Sachin’s stay in this format. The same people are mostly okay with Gambhir, Sehwag, Kohli and especially Captain Cool Dhoni. (Don’t get me wrong! I am a fan of all these players too, but need to draw a quantitative comparison to answer Sachin-haters)

Well, if we go by the two main ODI parameters: batting average and Strike rate, Sachin is still decisively the best! Over the last two years, his batting average is the highest, and his strike rate of 95 is third highest among Indian batsmen. That means he is still scoring runs, and that too at a pretty brisk pace. Even if he is keeping his personal landmarks in mind, he is not slowing down the team’s score rate. Then, what makes him selfish, and how would you differentiate between scoring for oneself and scoring for the team? Yes, the team does have a lot of enthusiastic young Cricketers, and we have learned to win without him in the team, but to say that he doesn’t have a place in the team would be unfair.

Coming to test matches, even in his bad patch in Australia and England tours, he was our second best batsmen. I know that from a batting legend, we expect more than being best or second best in a group of non-performers. We want him to win or at least manage draws for us. But overall, Sachin-haters are much less vocal about his place in Test side. This is understandable, because here he stands much taller as compared to the rest in the team, especially when it comes to away-matches. (Graph excludes Kohli, M Vijay and others who played very few matches, but none of them were anywhere near the top ) But it was funny, when after the Australian debacle, one of my very good friends, unfortunately a Sachin hater, posted an FB update asking for forced retirements for Sachin & a couple others, and followed it up with “If required, drop Dhoni and Sehwag from the test squad for the next series” . Forced retirement for Sachin, and “if required” for Dhoni & Sehwag!!! Look at the attached graph and you’ll know why I found this outrageous. I know that Raina, Kohli and Sharma may be the future, but right now, we need Sachin to play at least another year of test Cricket.

Another way to look at the comparative performances is to compare share of the team pie, i.e. on an average, how much share of the team’s total is contributed by a particular batsmen. This allows us to take into account the value of a batsman’s contribution in relatively low scoring matches. For example: Dravid’s 146 against England (Oval, 2011; Team score: 300) is far more important than his 119 against West Indies (Kolkata 2011; Team score: 631) To calculate this, I have calculated average of a batsman’s contributions, only for the matches that he has played in. The results may not offer a fair comparison, as I haven’t given any extra credit, if a batsman is not out. Also, this may be a bit unfair to batsmen like Raina and Dhoni, who bat at #6 or #7, and at these positions, usually it is not easy to contribute a lot, as either you under immense pressure because of top order failure, or you don’t have much to contribute, as top order has already amassed a huge total. Still, it can give us some idea about who is contributing the most to team’s score.

Here too, Sachin’s graph stands considerably taller than everybody else. On average, he scores 15.5% of the team’s total score, which is really high, when you are in the same team as Dravid, Laxman and Sehwag, all of whom, contribute between 13-14% to the team score on average. (I didn’t run this analysis for the 90’s. I am sure this would be even higher for Sachin then!)

In the above three examples, I simply proved quantitatively the obvious: “There is still no one in the Indian team, who comes close to Sachin”. But is Sachin really doing very bad, as per his own very high standards. Is this really the lowest point in his career? (Most of you know the answer to this question!). Isn’t two years a long period to compare someone’s current performance? I will try to address these in the next part of this post.

“You civilians!!”

Posted on April 18, 2009 by amitbhatnagar

Two weeks back, I had to take Chhatisgarh Express again and like always, the train was late. So, I located an empty seat on the platform and made myself comfortable. The guy next to me was almost my age, had a laptop with him and his lappy-bag was carrying a Kingfisher-airlines tag. In sum, he was clearly a software engineer coming from Bangalore/Hyderabad for a vacation to his home, or so I thought. Since it was still more than an hour for the train to arrive, I tried initiating a conversation.

“So you too a software engineer?”

“No, I am not.”

The tone was blunt and the implication was clear => “I am in no mood for a conversation.” So I thought of winding up the conversation.

“Sorry, you are approximately my age and were carrying a laptop. I, by default, assumed that you must be a software engineer.”

BIG MISTAKE!! The guy was already offended.

“So, what do you think? Only software engineers deserve to have laptops? Or can only people like you engineers afford to have them?”

😮 I, of course, in no way, meant anything even close to that. And about the question of affording, in a good number of cases (including mine), the laptops that we software engineers carry are not even ours, they are company property. But yes, I still was quite sure that at least in our age-group, it’s mostly the software engineers, who’re associated with carrying laptops.

“Well, In India, the IT revolution hasn’t caught that much. So mostly, you’d find people having professional uses for a laptop carrying it?”

ANOTHER MISTAKE!!

“Oh!! In India!! And where are you from? Are you not from India?”

“Of course, I am an Indian and I am proud of it”

“Yeah.. It’s very clear how much proud you are. Generalizing everything from the eyes of a software engineer and commenting negatively in public on progress of the country. See!! I am from defense and I hate it when you civilians make fun of India”

Oooh!! So the guy’s from army. That explains his passion for the country. But this time, I was offended, the phrase “You civilians” pinched me. I had heard this or its different connotations earlier too and I find it really disgusting.

But this wasn’t a time for a counter-attack, I thought of setting things right first. I objected to his remarks and told him I wasn’t making fun of the country, I was just looking at things as they are. I also told him about my own feelings for the country and also about what this “civilian” is doing for his alma-mater and society. Within 5-10 minutes of conversation, I guess it was clear to both of us that it’s an argument between two guys, who actually are passionate about taking India forward. But he still wasn’t too friendly. So I gave up saying that I understood that he was upset over something else and hence, there wasn’t any use in carrying the conversation forward. Precisely, at that time, somebody called him up and perhaps this was the break he needed.

After the call, he was a bit mellowed. He admitted that he had missed his train 2 hours back and hence, wasn’t in a good mood. We had a very good conversation then onwards. I told him about my life as a software engineer, also discussed my MBA plans and what I want to do after that. He told me about his life at Navy: how he gave up his dream for joining an IIT and never regretted the decision after entering the National Defence Academy for the first time. Felt really good to see that the government is taking very good care of the defense people. They surely deserve every bit of that for the work they do for the country.

Very soon, the announcement for my train’s arrival was made and I cursed myself for not bringing up the topic about his attitude on civilians in a conversation of about an hour. So I told him about the blog and promised to write about the conversation.

And then he did it again: “May be someday I’ll see your photograph in a newspaper as a successful businessman and realize that this was the guy I fought with. You seem to be a good guy. If even some of civilians start thinking the way you do, the country would be in a better shape.”

Ha!!This was one of the times when words of genuine praise do not make you happy. I thought of correcting him, but the train was already there. So I reminded him of my blog and took leave.

I may have made a mistake in generalizing that most of the laptop-carrying guys are from software industry. But what is worse: This generalization or generalizing that all civilians have zero feelings for the country? Aren’t people like Narainmurthy, Leander Paes, Mother Teresa, AR Rahman all civilians? They may not be fighting it out in the open, but in their own way, aren’t they doing their bit in making a name for the country? Talking about common men, I agree that most of us don’t do much in our daily life. But when the call from the country is there, a good number of us respond in our ways: be it contributing for flood-hit areas of Bihar or standing up against reservations, you’d find civilians contributing to the cause. This may not compare with the live action that army-guys are involved in, but would it be justifiable to write that off completely? Most importantly, like every other bunch of people, no two civilians are the same (or for that matter,no two defense guys either) Then, why this generalization: “You civilians”?? Why do you actually need to have a dichotomous view of the world: civilians and servicemen?

These are some of the questions I would have liked to ask that guy. I am still looking for the answers. I understand that some of the civilians would be making comments on this post as usual, but I would love to see the view point of somebody from defense too.

Break the chain-II

Posted on May 14, 2008 by amitbhatnagar

Well, this is in continuity of my post “Break the chain”, a post directed against useless chain mails. I very strongly believe that all of us should behave like educated, responsible netizens and must cross-verify the contents of any mail before forwarding it. I admit that at times I too have fallen prey to these and have sent such mails, but still I won’t ever mind sending a damage-control mail before anybody tries to use the “information” contained in the original mail.

But often I feel that not all people feel this way. At times, I’ve got chain mails of “Forward this mail else…” from total strangers and by the time, I type down a stern reply to that guy, my inbox already shows 2-3 more mails (the same mail forwarded as a “reply-all”) from people, who felt scared enough of the mentioned consequences, but didn’t wish to bother their friends.

Though I agree that the most irritating types of forwards are the ones mentioned above (forward else..), still I feel that the most dangerous type of chain-mails are the ones which seek to (mis)inform. This is because many users take the contents too seriously and may actually try to implement those suggestions. In case the information is misleading or grossly wrong (as is often the case), this can prove harmful.

So about a month back, I got a forward from Mr. AA, the moderator of the yahoo group for our society. The forward provided some deep knowledge about things that a number of things about “Mobile phone emergency usage”. The mail claimed to tell us a number of things we never knew about our mobile phones. The content of the mail can be located at this link. The best part was that Mr. AA had specifically added in the end: “This is the kind of information people don’t mind receiving.” 😀

I dutifully replied on the group citing the above link and mentioning that anybody would actually mind receiving a mail with any misleading info. (i.e. if he gets to know that the mail is misleading). I also pointed him to the link to my original blog-post on chain-mails and requested him to cross-verify things before forwarding.

From my past experience with such mail-forwarders, I was almost sure that the Mr AA (being the mod) would exercise his discretion in filtering out my mail and it won’t actually reach the intended audience. Not many people can afford to lose their face publicly after dispensing immense gyan on a subject. ( I don’t feel that correcting oneself is loss of face, but unfortunately most people do.)

So as my blog statistics show, Mr. AA did see my mail and visited my blog as well. But as expected my mail never appeared on the group. But surprise, surprise!! There was something unexpected in store for me. As it suddenly struck me a couple of days back, I’m not receiving any mails from the group. I got curious and checked that I’ve got no mails from the group from the time I sent that erring mail. I visited the group homepage to confirm what was quite obvious to me now: I was no longer the part of the group!!! I was thrown out for correcting wrong information!!

Thinking of it, I’d surely like to know the reasons why Mr. Mod decided to throw me out. Is it because of fear of “loss of face”? But think of it: Would people have minded if he had approved my mail to be sent to the group? I don’t think so.. But even if one person tries to apply any of the mentioned tricks and fails to get the results (Or may be get inverse results), that would be real loss of face.. What say, Mr AA??

I’m not terribly interested in being the part of the mentioned group. “The group is not for discussing society grievances”: Mr AA had once clarified when I had sent some issues with the working of the society. So I had assumed that the group was primarily for forwarded messages and thus, my interest in continuing with the group had dropped. But yup, there were some real good messages like the ones from a very experienced professor in our society. Would have liked to see some stuff like that. But this is not what concerns me.Primarily what hurts me is to see how man behaves even when he gets least of the powers. 🙁 Rightly said: “Power corrupts, Absolute power corrupts absolutely”

Toastmasters project#5: Are you concentrating too much on the road?

Posted on April 20, 2008 by amitbhatnagar

And Here’s my Project #5

Project#5 is titled:: Your body speaks” As is quite clear from the title, it expects you to use body-language effectively to reinforce your content. This includes (but is not limited to) gestures, posture and stage-coverage. You need to choose a topic that allows you to achieve these objectives successfully. So here is my project #5 speech. As always, comments invited!

Are you concentrating too much on the road?

One of my old friends recently appeared for a driving test in San Jose. After he cleared the test, the officer on duty congratulated him and remarked that he was known for disqualifying Indians in the test.My friend was bewildered and wanted to know the reasons for the same. The officer assured him that he finds most of the Indians concentrating too much on the road. At times, they’re not exactly aware of the fact they can look at places beyond the straight line of traffic. He often finds them not enjoying the journey, but rather going along the traffic.
Let us ignore whether it has anything to do with clearing the test; I’d just like to ask you people how many of you feel that he was correct? Are not most of us just keeping flowing along the traffic? Well, not sure what you think, but I personally feel that he was right, at least to some extent.

We keep flowing along the traffic, barely realizing where we need to go. I’d go further to say: at times, we’re not even willing to stop for refueling, even when we’re running out of fuel. We fail to realize that our car is not exactly in the best shape and perhaps it seriously requires servicing to cope up with the demands of traffic. Of course, we’d love if the fuel tanker is full and the car is in best shape possible, but we just don’t have time for all this. Right??

Now you may think that I am exaggerating a bit, but actually I’m not.

Friends, it’s the journey of life I’m talking about. Life’s a journey, the mundane tasks that we keep on doing daily are the road, you’re the car and you’re the driver as well. . What I personally feel is that we’re concentrating so much on the road that we’ve forgotten to enjoy the journey or even to try to know where the road is taking us.

Now think of it again:
Are we not just going along the traffic? Most of us picked science, because this is what the toppers opt for. Then picked engineering because this is what Science students go for. Then, opted for Software jobs because this is where the money is. And yeah, many, many of us wrote CAT because this is what the best of the engineering students. Just go back and think, at which point you chose your lane yourself? Oh right, some of us actually did, but most of us, just chose to follow them, flowing along the traffic has become a second nature to us.

Okay, now you followed the herd and are in a lane, which you try to call as your own. Not a problem, as long as you know how to enjoy the journey. Frankly speaking, I don’t, but I’m trying hard for it. But even for those who do feel that they’re enjoying the life to the max, I sometimes feel that the enjoyment has become too mechanical, having a drink or two with people, having a lunch at a mall, seeing a movie at a multiplex are typical ideas of enjoying life for most of us. But what we miss in this fast pace of life are the small joys of life. The small joys, when you see a smile on someone’s face and know that a little appreciation from your side is the reason for this. The small joys, which come along when you do something meaningful without expecting anything in return. And if you try for it, the opportunities are plentiful. Try doing something for your alma-mater for instance. You may not yet be in a position to sponsor a college-fest, but sometimes just calling up your juniors and saying “Good job, guys” is all you need to do. A pat on the back can do wonders to them and the joy in their voice may be the joy that you may be looking for yourself.

I’ve just started my journey and at times, I find myself running out of fuel. But it’s these small joys that provide me the fuel to keep going. Enjoying the journey can be real hard if you don’t take regular time off to refuel yourself.
And well, even if you choose the right lane and get the fuel regularly, our cars do wear out with time. May be you’re no longer happy about the way the car’s doing. It may be time that it needs some servicing or may be a complete overhauling. And what do I mean by that in real life? Simply that, may be your current skills or life-style are not sufficient for you to move forward or to keep you happy. Try to keep learning. Join a music class, start a quiz club, think of learning a foreign language, write a blog.. Keep doing something that helps you polish your mind and makes sure that you’re simply vegetating away. Well, I need not tell this to anybody here; everybody sitting here surely realizes the value of maintenance. But remember, even for the best of the cars, timely and regular service is mandatory.

So just remember, if you’re the car, you’re the driver as well. The journey can be meaningful only if it’s you who’re driving your car to the right path, get the fuel regularly and get it serviced at regular intervals. Wish you all a very Happy, successful and meaningful journey!!

Toastmasters Project #4:You’re what you eat for your breakfast

Posted on April 19, 2008 by amitbhatnagar

I delivered my project #4 on December 3 last year . Yup, I’m a bit late for posting this, but I wished to have at least one non-toastmasters post b4 I start copy-pasting my speeches again.. 😀

Project#4 is titled :How to say it” It expects you to eliminate jargon, use right words and sentence structure and use rhetorical devices and questions to emphasize your ideas and to communicate ideas accurately and vividly. In addition, you’re also expected to incorporate the learnings of the first three projects.
So here is my project #4 speech (Comments invited 🙂 )

You’re what you eat for your breakfast

The topic may have sent some wrong signals, but I’m not here to preach about vegetarianism or to talk about carbohydrates and proteins. I’ll talk about something else. But first here’s a little incident that happened some days back.

I was coming to office with my friend Rahul. At the traffic signal before the office, Rahul pointed to a pretty girl sitting in the car next to us. She was holding a bowlful of cut fruits and enjoying it while the signal was ticking down to zero. Spontaneously I started blabbering about how fast the life has become that a person doesn’t even has time to properly relish his meal. At this my consciousness, ever so ready to catch me off-guard reminded me that just two days back, I had skipped my breakfast as I had to finish off some stuff before our weekly status meeting and this wasn’t a one-off incident; this has been happening every now and then for some time.

Suddenly, I was reminded of this quote that I read some time back “You are what u eat for your breakfast” Going by it, perhaps I, who am not having any breakfast, am nothing, Yes, at those times, I am a nobody, a person who doesn’t have any life of his own. Anyways, the fact that I had a sumptuous breakfast that day made me feel a bit better.
Coming back to the topic, I really like this quote. I find this to mean much more than a quote about your eating habits. How? Let us see.

Breakfast is the first meal of the day, something that lays foundation for the day to come. Dieticians have proved that the breakfast provides you the necessary jump-start after 6-8 hours of sleep. Those who skip breakfast often feel tired, restless or irritable in the morning. Having a healthy breakfast helps you get ready for the tensions, the physical challenges that wait for you in the next few hours.
Isn’t then this quote true for every other aspect of life as well?

A good start is an important ingredient of the success to come. Psychologists have proved that childhood experiences of a person have a bearing on his whole life. Good education, for instance, is the starting of a great career. And that’s why you find parents queuing up for the admissions of their kids in the best of the schools. Extend this example to the corporate world and you’ll find that companies, which started with a bang, continue to hold that advantage for years to come. When Srilanka won the World Cup Cricket in 1996, it was largely due to the flying start that Jayasurya provided them in the first 15 overs in most of the matches. Rightly said, the greatest buildings are the ones, which have strongest foundations.

But is a good start in itself sufficient to guarantee you success? No way!! Your breakfast, however nutritious it may be, can’t see you through the day by itself. You need to supplement that with a balanced lunch and a healthy dinner later in the day. I bet every one of us must be having stories of some schoolmates, who were quite promising in studies or some other field in those days, but managed to ruin their careers by not following up to the great start that they had. To succeed, you do need an Arvinda de-Silva in the middle order to cash on the great start that Jayasurya provides because after a great start, it’s all the more your responsibility to make sure that you live up to the opportunities that your great start has paved for you.

And what to do if you fail to get a good start. What if the situations that dictated your start were beyond your control? I remember many of my batchmates who kept ruing about their lack of schooling in English medium and they really faced a lot of problems in campus interviews. So can a bad start have an impact on your entire life? Can missing your breakfast spoil your entire day??

Yes, surely it can, but only as long as you allow it to. I talked about my batch-mates, who didn’t have English medium schooling, but still there were others, who had a similar academic background, but they worked hard over their weaknesses the next four years and they were among the first ones to get placed in the campus recruitment. On similar lines, not all of us got opportunities and environment for public speaking in our school-days, but all of us are having delicious toasts of great speeches as our breakfast right here at Toastmasters. So every time you feel that you’ve missed your breakfast, just remember the girl at the traffic signal I mentioned in the beginning. You can have your breakfast when you need it and are ready for it.

So a great start is really, really important. Whenever you can, work hard, make your plans meticulously, have the required training and education before you delve into that dream venture so that you have a great start. Follow it up with more hard work, more planning, but if you fail to get a great start, never mind; you still can be a winner if you want to. As they say, no-one can go back and make a brand new start; anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending.

Toastmasters Project #3: Break the chain!!

Posted on December 14, 2007 by amitbhatnagar

I delivered my project #3 on November 6.
The title for Project #3 is “Get to the point” The expectations from this are that the project must have a General purpose (To entertain, to inform etc) and a specific purpose (something like to inform about ill-effects of procrastination). The entire speech should gel in well to support these purposes. And of-course No notes!!

Here’s the content of my speech:

Break the Chain!!

Did you know that if you’re being forced to withdraw money from ATM at gunpoint, you can inform the police by entering your pin in reverse?
Or that Coca-cola logo is a secret message directed against a particular religion and the blasphemous message is clear if you hold the logo in front of a mirror?
And off-course, you know that Bill Gates is sharing his fortune and you can be a beneficiary if you choose to forward a certain mail?

All of these seemingly unrelated examples are: appealing, interesting and informative; But the biggest connection is: Source of all of these are chain-mails and at the same time each of them is incorrect.

Mr. Toastmaster and fellow toastmasters,
My speech today is to urge you to break-the-chain:: to stop being part of chain-mails
Well, not all chain-mails are bad. My grudge is against the mails that seek to lure or threaten the recipient into forcefully continuing the chain: the ones, which are meant to spread hatred, superstitions or misinformation or simply to continue the chain. Yes, I’ve even seen a chain saying: let’s see how far it can get; just add your name to the list and forward it to your friends. Can it get any dumber than this??

At this juncture, many of you may be feeling what harm an innocuous forwarded mail can do even if it’s factually incorrect? This is what many of my friends argue. But believe me it’s more dangerous than it looks.

To start with, it can make you look like an idiot. Sample this: I got a mail from one of my juniors asking me to forward it to 10 guys and then press F6 five times. The mail claimed that after this, the name of my Secret admirer will appear on the screen. Such garbage coming from a software engineer!! I stopped reading his mails after that.

Many of us, who normally do not forward unsolicited mails, often give in to the emotional appeals and consider our job to the society done after forwarding such mails. I believe that most of us must have at some time received a mail regarding Red-Cross donating a cent for a cancer-struck child or for some 9/11 victim. What we don’t realize is the fact that we’re in fact causing more harm to the reputation and work of such organizations by forwarding unverified information about them. And then, they need to spend hundreds of man-hours for refuting the contents of the mail.

Coming to more serious effects:
Remember: often the original context of the mail is often lost in a chain and if some legal issue crops up and the mail is traced back to you, then you can be considered the author of that mail. Are you prepared to take that risk? Let us take a fictional scenario of Mr X, working for Microsoft, India, who gets a hoax-mail regarding a new virus attacking Windows XP. Mr. X forwards it to some of his friends thinking what’s wrong with being cautious. His friends forward it claiming “This comes from one of friends, who is working for Microsoft.” It won’t take more than two-three steps of the chain for that to become “This comes from officially from Microsoft” Very soon, MS is contacted for verification and when they trace the mail to their own employee, do you think it’s going to be easy for Mr X. I’ve read about employees losing their jobs on similar grounds.
Things can get worse for people who fall for such imaginary ideas. Think what can happen if you try the ATM trick and the tech-savvy robber gets to know that you were actually trying to inform the police.

Now that I believe I’ve managed to convince you against the dangers that this menace poses, here are some ideas to counter it.
The minimum we can do is not to be the source of any such message. A 2-minute search can reveal its falsehood. There’re sites like Break-the-chain and Hoax-slayer dedicated to the cause and they’ll give you scientific reasons why the particular message is hoax. But don’t stop at just ignoring the mail. If you’re able to establish the fakeness of the mail, do attack the source. Reply to the sender, mention the links and request him to write a damage control mail to recipients of this mail as well as the person from whom he got the mail. I know this may create a kind of reverse-chain, but this surely is worth it.
Further if you really like to forward something, ask yourself if you’re ready to be identified as the original source of message. Such simple steps and you’ve done your bit against this menace.

Dear Toastmasters, the e-mail is one of the best things to have happened to mankind in the field of communication. Let’s be responsible users and not abuse this great communication tool. We just need to use some common sense and follow some simple steps to Break-the-chain every time we encounter one!!

Toastmaster Project #2: What’s in a name?

Posted on November 7, 2007 by amitbhatnagar

I delivered my project #2 on Sept 18,2007.

Following are the expectations from a Project #2 speech:

Select an appropriate outline which allows listeners to easily follow and understand your speech.
Make your message clear, with supporting material directly contributing to that message.
Use appropriate transitions when moving from one idea to another.
Create a strong opening and conclusion.

Time-limit:: 5-7 minutes.
And here’s what I spoke::

What’s in a name?

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

Fellow Toastmasters, Mr. Toastmaster and Dear Guests

This was what Shakespeare said in Romeo and Juliet many years back.
Is really a name that unimportant? Or does it actually matter what name do you have? Let us see both sides of the names: names of persons, names of brands and names of places: we’ll explore them all.

If the names were really unimportant, why do companies spend billions searching for that key brand name? Why would politicians create such hullabaloo about changing the names of the cities and states? Why would parents go on surfing name databases endlessly before naming their children? Come on Mr. Shakespeare, even the name Rose has got an identity of its own. And you can find many sweet girls named as Rose after the beautiful flower. Not all girls named Rose are necessarily sweet-natured, but given a choice for a blind date, you’d surely like to meet a girl named Rose as compared to someone named let us say chickenpox. I know no one names her daughter that way, but if it were not for the name, why would you make that negative impression of the sweet girl named chickenpox even before meeting her? So isn’t it the name that’s driving the entire world?

After all, your name is your face to the rest of the world, it’s your first point of contact with a stranger; it’s your identity!!!
Well, not if you’re named something like Michael in the United States or Amit in India; In that case instead of being your identity, your name can give you a severe identity crisis. Just for the benefit of those who missed my ice-breaker, I’d like to mention again that there are 29 Amits working in Adobe, out of which six are in my team alone. We often have official mail interactions, in which the Developer Amit writes to the Quality Engineer Amit and the program manager Amit is marked a copy and it sometimes is confusing to figure out which Amit’ s Action items are stated in the mail.

Anyways, coming back to the original discussion; whatever your name may be, it is in fact your prime identity. And in case of a common first name, it’s your full name or even at times nickname that’ll provide you that identity.

In the corporate world, perhaps the names have become all the more important. The choice of a good brand name is considered critical for the success of a project. There are names which are taken as ambassadors of quality and even a new product from an established brand is in high demand even before the quality of the product is known.

A new height is reached when the name starts making the transition from being a Proper noun to a verb. The speech I’m delivering right now is supported by something known as Googling. Why to go any further when we’ve an example of the same here in Adobe itself? I believe everyone must be aware of the mantra in digital photography: Click it and then “Photoshop” it. The name has become a verb here!!! And it sells!!

So does it appear that the names are in fact the only things that matter? Was Shakespeare totally off-track when he made that remark? Are names really sufficient to take you to the path of success all on their own?

This may sound crazy, but there actually are people who believe that they can change their destinies by just changing their names. Recently a major bank not really popular for its services changed its name claiming “Nothing has changed except the name” I can almost hear the customers screaming: this was the only change we could have lived without.

And if the names were really that powerful, why are almost unimaginative company names like the ones named after the founders still popular? Hewlett-Packard and Bajaj are just few of such examples. Why would the two “Ritu Aroras” as mentioned in Ritu’s speech that day have two distinct destinies? Did you know that the Google brand, which we were discussing just now, is actually the result of a misspelling of Googol, the word for 10 raised to the power of 100? So if it were not misspelled initially, we could all have been happy Googoling stuff out whenever needed.

So what does all this lead us to? I still am confused: Do names matter or not? Digging a bit deep into it, we get to know that perhaps Shakespeare was at least a bit right.

I personally feel it works both ways. First you need to do your job, make your name and then onwards your name will make you out. So let us assume Google starts something new: let us say a new web browser: Google explorer. It’ll have a definite advantage over any non-existent name in the market: even over the Googol explorer if it ever comes up.

So Mr. Shakespeare, it wouldn’t have mattered if the flower were named something else in the first place itself, but now that the Rose has marked its name by becoming a symbol of Sweetness, love and beauty, calling someone/something as Rose does carry some weight and calling a Rose by any other name simply doesn’t make any practical sense.

Racing Towards Infinity

About my life! About my dreams!!

i Opine