Did I just invent a new - BS - term that just might have some meaning... tell me

In a response to a sales rep of a company whose sftware I just downloaded, I said this - "...

Thanks for you email. I need to, while doing my day job, find time to understand how to use Neo4J for things such as poly-variate types of nodes and edges. Please give me a few months while I try to manage to come on board. ..."

 

Poly-variate Types....? Please help me my geek friend who still have the patience to read my rants.

 

Thanks

 

 

Governance in contemporary India

Wonderful ... the Esteemed His Honorable Home Minister is concerned about the image projected to the visiting Putin and globally by the protests. Somehow this falls into the same category of mind-set that I had questioned in a debate/discussion in which I represented my school in 9th Std (I think; somewhere in Kandivali, M'bay) where I asked whether (can't type this in Devnagari) ".... hazaro saalo ki parampara hain..." --- "Did one of the most populous regions of the world manage to have its populace stop thinking...?". I was immediately 'asked' by the judges to leave the podium and then escorted out of the venue :) I have since realized that the event was sponsored by groups who would be considered now to be affiaited with those in the parliamentary opposition.

Hence some of my earlier statements (on other media - need to figure out a good cheap way of integrating) about having a forum for rational discourse - non-partisanship is implied. I am still surprised with the aversion to even refer to charged topics in India ... with the reason being given "... please let us not discuss politics...", when the issue is with basic governance and trust of the populace.

It seems that all political parties have used that and the state of governance here has been no different from the days of the Raj - the machinery and hence its mindset remains the same.
 

On the Newtown, CT horror .. or why should our children fear.

At the risk of coming off in an unpleasant light, here are my two or five cents. I have not seen any discourse in public about what motivated such maniacs. The public discourse has rather veered towards, too immediately IMO, abstract public policy issues.

As had already been pointed out earlier in many public discussion threads, such incidents are rare. The fallout, though limited, is very profound in the lives of the individuals affected. It seems unlikely that gun control, or 'bullet control' as a recent article in The Atlantic proposes (have not bothered to read it, might just be satire) get to the root to even be practically effective.

I was part of school, which then was considered to among the best (around my class both academically and in sports) in a city of over 10 mil, which perhaps had the best educational infrastructure in India. When I was in 9th standard, it shocked the staff when the 'geeks' applauded one of the 'ruffians' who went into the staff room and held a knife to one of the teachers and asked him to lay off insulting us. While I do not have clarity on anger or frustration, or its causes, I do wonder what triggered the rage.

Should our schools be prisons or should we incur the impossible cost of trying explain to our children why we should not fear?
 

On Simplicity

I adore simplicity in design, but am sceptical when the road to such simplicity is deigned to be simple as well.

This probably holds true in other facets of existence, living included.

About the basic human arts ... triggered by a post from the James Beard Foundation.

Referring to the post at: http://www.jamesbeard.org/blog/talking-trust-and-sustainability-new-orleans

I appreciate both the subject of the post as expressed in the link URI as well as the sensualness of the picture posted on Facebook.

While it is likely that I am missing sufficent relevant detailed sources, there seems to be a lack of a robustness in the discussion posted.

"...
We work hard to invite a diverse group of people and perspectives. We have chefs, of course, and farmers. We invite folks from municipal and state government offices, urban planners, academics, people who work in food distribution, folks working on community gardens, and in nonprofit, social justice, and food equity organizations. We've had clammers, restaurateurs, marine biologists, and geneticists. We try to include people representing large food companies, too. The idea is to bring as many distinct opinions to the table to have an open dialogue so that we can begin to understand the complexity of the issues people face. The nature of the group changes from location to location, obviously, but the goal of diversity is always important.

..."

This seems to be the only obvious reflection that food is not just about sensuality and isolated art form.

In fact, food along with architecture and language, is one of the basic forms of art representative of human creativity. Perhaps ironically, these are also derived from human activities that try to solve fundamental human needs that could be seen as very far removed from high art.

I was disappointed to not see a more comprehensive and perhaps continuing discussion on the topic at the URI posted earlier.

On a more personally biased mode, I wonder, given the profession from which I earn my pay, is it possible that spending much of a lifetime trying to teach a grain of sand (silicon) to follow instructions and report back might not be seen in the same light.

I don't think food related arts would be seen in the same light, since these still require repeated human interventions and while being similar to other performance arts in that they need to be executed repeatedly by people, they also share a characteristic expected of the silicon 'arts' in that the viewers expect the performances to be consistently repeatable. That is hard!


And I have not yet begun to talk about sustainability et al! :)

Articles about Microsoft's 'down-fall' or are extant organization models relics?

An example source I have is http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2012/07/microsoft-downfall-emails-steve-ballmer  I have seen some other URLs with a similar message - reflecting managing 'resources'. Er no folks, these are real humans. While this aspect may be a much more interesting, one to which most of us can relate immediately and instinctively, there just might be a deeper issue at play in that corporation.

That issue is, likely, not unique to Microsoft, or even non-governmental organizations. The issue, IMO, is that how do you you maintain a semblance of singularity (unitarian - using this not as a 'proper' noun or a collection of intents that converge) of purpose in a large and complex organization, where the broader objectives may result in conflicting goals.

In the past, I had the privilege of having a fairly senior person at Microsoft open up, and tell me that the fundamental issue at MS was that it was not 'one' company. I interpreted this with the qualification "... others see MS as one company....". This was many years ago, and I still think that qualifier is valid. My guess is that many of the little few who read this blog will agree with this interpretation -- perhaps after a bit of reflection and a word replacing re-search aka googling.

It may be interesting to posit this with the problem faced by many national governments - since the economic climate is bleak, many are easy targets for blame, especially the incumbent majors, or those deemed to soon become.

While we may easily get into pedagogical arguments of private vs public vs governmental orgs being unable to fix things, it is possible that something fundamental has changed / is changing in expectations at the individual level (or a small 'filial' group) that larger models of organization - governmental or otherwise - are unable to handle.

--
mgh

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/fight.png

Worth seeing!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=bKZu70ukkBQ 

Effectiveness of distributed organizations

Recent experiences have led me to think that in geographically distributed organizations / teams, it is not the process or systems to identify accountability that is among the primary factors for success.

Rather it might just be trust. Trust develops along multiple axes. Perhaps the primary one is via communication - whether resulting from face to face interactions or through various technical solutions.

Lately I have found the former more effective, though in the past I have been able to be effective working with people spread across continents who I rarely, in some cases never, met in person. In the latter case, I was working for an academic organization, and even there the legal office would be seen an impeding factor in allowing staff to collaborate freely. But we chugged along regardless. I have also seen effective success in smaller organizations.

In at least some cases, teams that may be considered 'remote' - in that they are removed from the primary markets for a product/offering - see themselves in the function of optimizing operational efficiencies. This seems to lead to primary metrics such as reducing attrition and expanding head count without concern for how these may meet fundamental business objectives.

My question is how to make the effectiveness of remote team scale. Communication will always be variegated for many diverse reasons, and extended in person interactions are one way to addressing the communication problem, but it may not always be seen as cost effective.


All & any thoughts are welcome.

Cheers

--
mgh

My lineage may have a fairly broad impact!

What might I be missing here?

Somehow Google Circles seems to think my (known) family is 1879 strong. Even though my lineage is in India, this seems a tad absurd.