Fire safety for high rises

Daily we hear of incidents of fire in high rises and all the lives lost.

I wonder why the only measures are water spray systems and few balconies jutting outside at regular intervals? The extra emergency staircases are often unusable because of the smoke.

Why do architects do not design multiple staircases on the "outside" at regular intervals traversing top to bottom? Some simple desing improvements will ensure that the aesthetics are also maintained.

Mirror mirror on the wall...

I wonder how our personalities would have evolved if there was no concept of mirrors...man made or natural. If there was no way to look at ourselves...???

China may lose again

In the early times India and China were at the forefront of technology and science. But somewhere between the 12th - 15th Century Chinese turned inward and discouraged interaction with foreigners. Europe experienced the Industrial revolution and China missed the bus.

Recently China woke up to the benefits of industrialization and caught up to become the manufacturer to the world.

The west has again experienced a knowledge revolution and China is again up to its tactics of blocking the internet, Google etc.

Are they not doing the same mistake again? It was possible then to catch on with manufacturing but will it be equally easy with knowledge...I wonder.

Vaastu Calculator

Someone should make a simple Vaastu calculator on Facebook...technology for the same is now easily available!


1. with access to a simplified Visio like interface
2. option to upload the floor plan in excel etc.

Sales...Implementation...Go live

You will often find implementation and delivery team fretting about how the sales guys have oversold the product, have promised features and functionalities which are either not possible or simply too costly to develop / configure to justify the project financials.

For a moment consider the situation from the sales guys perspective, he has to make the sale in face of stiff competition from other vendors/partners. And anyways software is one of the most difficult products to sell, being intangible and with a long sales cycle. He has to meet his numbers right? He also has a deadline...!

Also, very few corporates seem to have the talent pool to consider all techno-commercial aspects of the project in a balanced way specifically ensuring that the vendor makes a standard profit. Mostly it is a ugly negotiation on the price. Forget a time and material project.

The truth is that you have now been handed a seemingly impossible project scope and timeline in hand and all the effect of the booz from the "project win" party is over.

What should you do?

If I may say in a single line...just like it was the job of the sales guy was to win the project, the job of the delivery team is now to make the client "go live".

To elaborate further, you will have to basically segregate the business requirements between critical and non-critical. This is easier said than done and requires a very good understanding of the client business. Of course all requests will be made out to be critical. Please ensure that all business critical requirements are taken care of and push for go live. Generally frivolous requirements vanish by themselves once the system is live. :-)

Read, unread...

Read, unread...


Fiction
Chanakya's Chant-Ashwin Sanghi
The Five People You Meet In Heaven
The Bridge Across Forever
Rain In The Mountains
The Rozabal Line
Atlas Shrugged


Non Fiction
The Bed Of Procrustes
India After Gandhi: The History Of The World's Largest Democracy
The Big Switch: Rewiring The World, From Edison To Google
Omnibus :emotional Intelligence & Working With-Daniel Goleman 

Opium City The Making Of Early Victorian Bombay

Civilization: The West And The Rest
The Clash Of Civilizations And The Remaking Of World Order
Another Way To Live: A Psychiatrist Among Indian Ascetics
Mussolini
Guns, Germs And Steel: A Short History Of Everybody For The Last 13,000 Years
Don\'t Lose Your Mind, Lose Your Weight
The Book Of Ram
The Tibetan Book Of Living And Dying: A Spiritual Classic From One Of The Foremost Interpreters Of Tibetan Buddhism To The West
Living With The Himalayan Masters


Classics
To Kill A Mockingbird
A Passage To India
The Old Man And The Sea
Nineteen Eighty-Four

Business

The Boston Consulting Group On Strategy: Classic Concepts And New Perspectives

Trump The Art Of The Deal

The Dark Side Of Valuation : Valuing Old Tech, New Tech, And New Economy Companies

Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten The World Economy

Execution

The High Performance Entrepreneur

The HBR List: Breakthrough Ideas For 2009

What The CEO Wants You To Know: How Your Company Really Works

Superfreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, And Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance 

Leadership

Information Technology

The Mythical Man Month: Essays On Software Engineering

Software Engineering - A Practioner S Approach

Hindi
Mrityunjay - Shivaji Sawant

Whiteboard warriors

Nice term right? This "whiteboard warriors"...

But such a downer...you hope you have coined something unique and then you google it and find its already done umpteem times by so many people!

Anyways...this is what we are slowly becoming...whiteboard warriors...the battle is now fought in the meeting room. We are all becoming knowledge warriors. With all this knowledge economy stuff and KPO's and strategy and blue oceans and what not. Meetings continue long into the night aided by pizza and coke.

Make me think of Jedi from Star Wars...hopefully we will practice enough that one day we all can move things simply by thinking...