Wednesday, September 28, 2005

Sunday, September 25, 2005

Spam on my blog

Damn.. why am I seeing so many spam comments on my blog ? Is this happening only on mine or are others deleting this/taking some action ???

Tuesday, September 20, 2005

CEO speak... Contd.

Because of public demand(ahem...), I am posting some thoughts of what the CEO of GE, Jeff Immelt, spoke when he was at Auburn.
(Disclaimer: These thoughts may have been modified by me and may not accurately portray the thoughts of Jeff Immelt. These are just from memory and should not be miscontrued as slander or malign).

Hmmm...There were some problems.. I went with a book and pen to take some notes... But there was not even enough standing space...The audi was jammed... packed to the brim.. people were sitting in the aisles, standin on their toes...so will just put out some things which I remember ...

Bureaucracy. Any huge organization will get bogged down by bureaucracy. GE is bigger than many many countries in the financial countries. If you really need to innovate, cut down the red-tapes. Allow a forum for all employees to put out their thoughts.

Innovation. As Rutherford said to a graduate student who said he worked day and night continuously -"then when do you think?!? " ...Devote some qualtiy time to think. Just the rigmarole of work will kill your creativity. Companies ought to give time to relax to all classes of employees - this will indirectly help it in getting dividends.

Management. When someone asked him if there was one company that *he* - as the CEO of GE admired, what would that be. The answer was no surprise. The one company that really is at the leading edge of innovation, quite unbureaucratic and SUPERBLY managed is Toyota. He said that Toyota is the blue chip amongst the Fortune 10-20 companies... Almost all of them look up to it.

Other than that, there was some mention about the Jack Welch Technology Centre in Bangalore(this is the biggest research center of GE outside USA). And the perpetual worry that US is producing lesser and lesser engineers and graduate students.

I am trying to find where they have posted the video of his speech. Will try to get that.

Sunday, September 11, 2005

CEO speak...

Jeffrey Immelt, Chairman of the Board and CEO, General Electric, was at Auburn to give a talk on 'Leadership and Innovation' on Friday. It was inspiring to say the least.

More details about the talk later. I'll try to get a video of his talk.

Saturday, September 03, 2005

Dur(Su)yodhana !??!

I have heard Duryodhana also being referred to as Suyodhana in some places... In fact, I had asked JRS when we were in Vijaya High School... for the non VHS guys, JRS was our initial class teacher(1994-97 batch) and the best Sanskrit teacher I've ever seen. He had given a complex explanation which I seem to have forgotten.

Can someone clarify ?

Mood: mai parachikoLLing

Thursday, September 01, 2005

Reader's (In)Digest?!?

I have been a regular reader of Reader's Digest(RD) since a long time... But somehow the articles in the editions post 2000 dont look so good. I mean I still re-read the older editions... Thanks to Srinivas Prasad, who had an almost complete collection of RD from 1959-present, I read most of them during my B.E days in Bangalore.

I recently, chanced upon a book titled 'Fun Fare', a publication of RD(first edn 1949) which is a collection of humour and anecdotes in book form. Amongst its editors are the who's who of humour - Bennett Cerf(the maverick founder of Random House), J.P.Mc Evoy and the inimitable Groucho Marx. This book with humourous anecdotes dating back to 60-70 years still brings laughter and mirth when I read it. Same with the older editions of RD magazine. But somehow, I cant seem to associate with articles of my own generation(so anachronistic!) since it has started publishing a lot of gossip.

This has also been echoed by a couple of my friends who seem to think that the quality of material in RD has gone down drastically over the years. But wait a sec... RD is a collection of articles and bits and pieces that readers themselves send! So does this mean that the quality of readership has gone down?!?!?