Deep ka Blog

The time flies SO FAST.. still feeling the last birthday was just few months ago and another birthday popped up.. time flies.. seriously, it flies..

Every birthday or at the new year, I plan to do the things in coming year.. but from this year onwards, I have decided that, I am not going to make any plans.. no wishes.. nothing.. I will let the time pass by as it’s going.. it’s real fun in getting the surprises afterall.. haha

This year’s birthday is going to be bit slow… I wanted my wife, Megha to be around.. but she has gone to London to visit her sister.. so all I could do is, cut the cake infront of her on the video chat.. generally, ever birthday she makes sure that I get surprises but since this time she isn’t around.. I am not expecting any surprises.. but I am happy..

Also, along with my birthday, it’s my company’s birthday too.. it completed 5 years today.. I had few plans for the company site and all.. but again, like always, when I make plans.. I never manage to implement them.. so from now onwards, it will be only action.. and then announcement

I am signing off now, have lot of things to say, but I will have to log off in few minutes as tomorrow is gonna be a early morning day.. haha

Lots of love,
Deep

Aah.. it’s been almost a month since my last post.. it was time, when I used to post like crazy but now, the work is keeping me lot lot more busy.. you won’t believe but, I have couple posts saved in my drafts section for almost 2 years.. I never end up finishing them….

The time is flying by very very fast.. I remember, last year on my birthday, I had shown preview design of the new theme and mentioned about, getting the new theme up in couple of months but it’s been a year and I have never been able to get the theme up.. the HTML files are right there in my mailbox but again, no time to make WordPress theme.. but I am not complaining.. I am happy with the way things are shaping up..

So, what’s happening these days?

Well, many things.. I got new office.. so I can fit in everyone Now we are 8 and will be around 13 odd guys.. (Oh yea, I am looking for 3-4 PHP Programmers, so do let me know if you know any)

Currently, the renovation work is going on in the new office.. I was hoping that it will be done somewhere in this week but it’s taking forever.. so I have lost the hope of seeing it done in this month.. But I am pretty much excited to show the office to my family aka Web1 Team..

I just hope things go as planned..

On the work front, the work is going on pretty smoothly.. I finally on track of getting “organized”.. the process of getting organized makes few things go haywire in the start but things becomes stable eventually.. so, if you do not want to get in a messy situation, starting making a workflow process and get yourself organized before anything goes haywire..

On the personal front… well.. I have been planning for a holiday since long but I guess, it’s not going to come anytime soon.. for now, life is all about the work and work..

Oh yea, my wife Megha will be travelling to London anytime next week… so I am gonna miss her for quite sometime, as she is gonna stay there for 2 whole months.. and the worst part in this whole process is, her visa application is still not approved, we are waiting for her visa to arrive.. but again for some crazy unknown reasons it’s still under process…  So, fingers crossed and hoping for the best.. 

Oh I guess that’s it…. I don’t think anything else is left to say.. I just hope few things shape up as I have expected.. (generally they don’t haha)

Cheers,
Deep

It’s a Sunday afternoon, I should say boring Sunday afternoon.. I really don’t know what I am going to write but started writing this (un)planned post about my experience in Kutch..  and my personal experiences within the span of last one week..

I left for Kutch on last Monday, 6th July, I was pretty much excited as my main purpose of visiting Kutch was to meet my grandparents.. I am kind of fond of them.. clean hearted people.. We see the love in their eyes..

I had decided that I will keep the work on the backseat but then I got stuck in the small issues which eventually were blown out of proportion.. few things left me in deep shock.. basically behavior of few people.. I won’t be able to post much about it now as I have been told myself to keep my mouth shut till the issues are resolved but I would surely like to tell the world whole story about how people try to take you on a joy ride..  (Obviously without playing name games..)

So, 6th and 7th were almost spent on cleaning up the mess.. though the shadows of it still remains..

But on the positive site.. I felt really good meeting my grand parents.. I saw the joy in their eyes..

After taking rest on 7th, as per our plan, we left to explore Kutch on 8th (We had planned for 2 days).. though the plan kept changing till the end..

We first visited a place called Mata nu Madh.. it is basically a temple.. I thought it will be a good place to visit but frankly speaking, it was one of the worst place to visit.. (though my parents like the temple and all..), then we moved to a place called Narayan Sarovar.. this one is another temple but I had decided to go to this place just to enjoy the scenic beauty and hope to get a closer look at the Indian border.. (It’s not so far from there), but I was left disappointed.. It did not have anything what I had in my old childhood rough memories..

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Returned from Blogcamp Pune 2 around few hours back.. it was a nice drive to Pune.. the weather was pretty good.. loved the rain.. the clouds covering mountains.. Lonavala looked like heaven, felt like being there..

Oh, I was supposed to talk on Blogcamp Pune 2, OK OK.. I am back on track.. Vada Pav was pretty good at SICSR – Symbiosis (the venue), but I missed the Poha as Annkur had recommended..  Will try it definitely next time..  I loved the wind blowing on the 7th floor.. and the few babes roaming around in the girls hostel opposite of the venue.. and Yeah.. I enjoyed couple of sessions too.. The session by Ankesh and Annkur were pretty interesting.. but apart from that nothing impressed me much.. But the purpose of the post is not about criticizing Blogcamp Pune 2 but it is my bit improve the whole thing..

Following are the loopholes I found..

1. No proper management, Yeah, there were couple of guys at the registration desk but that’s it.. the white board did not have any session details for the first couple of hours (the unconference started at 10 AM)
2. The intro session ate up good amount of time..
3. No proper sync between the 2 rooms, I think most of the people were sitting in a single room and there was no proper tracking of the activities in the other room.
4. A person hijacking the sessions (Known as Thakkar from what I understand).. I know I know, everyone loved it.. he was good at what he was doing in fact.. but knowingly or unknowingly, he hijacked and pulled up all the people to listen to his comedy skills. I don’t think it was the right thing.. Come on guys it’s Blogcamp.. not any entertainment show.. there were people in the other room trying to give out the sessions.. but there was no one in the rooms, everyone was enjoying his jokes..

   Those guys might have spent hours of time to make presentation, prepare for the session and their hard work goes in vain.. The whole traffic gets attracted to something which could have been done after all the sessions were over too..I definitely did not attend Blogcamp to waste my time in the funny show.. and I am sure, others too did not come for the funny show..

So, how do we improve the whole thing? I would suggest, we should take some lessons from Blogcamp Chennai.. (the first one), it was very well organized, everything perfectly set and managed..

So, here are the pointers..

1. Cut down the intro session or just take it off. I personally don’t think it will be of any use getting 100 odd people introduce themselves one by one.. this kind of exercise just takes lot of time and yields nothing.. I think the same kind of problem we had faced in earlier blog camp Pune too..
2. Be sure to have a list of the sessions before everything starts.. Yea, I know it’s unconference and all.. but having a list of sessions is pretty much convenient for the visitors (Obviously, things can be added / taken off from it over the time)
3. Categorize the sessions in 2 types.. say, Advanced and Newbies, or whatever categorization you feel like. Or simply, divide the sessions timings based on the theme.. I am saying this because, in the 2nd half, most of the sessions were boring.. they were boring for me but it’s highly possible that certain group of people will look forward to those kind of sessions.. frankly speaking, from what I saw, most of the people were either yawning or doing some other stuff, so this might give wrong signals to the person who is taking the session.. so, I feel it’s better to categorize so only target audience will attend the specific sessions..
4. Time is money.. we have to make sure that the sessions start and end at the specified time..
5. And yeah, most important, don’t allow anyone to hijack the sessions.. Yeah, I know it’s an unconference but think from the point of view of the guy who is going to take the session, what will be his state of mind (seeing no people around), what about his hard work? Still funny sessions more important?
6. Accept sponsorships, I know few people will be against it.. accept the money from the sponsors but don’t allow them to spam around in the sessions.. use the money in getting better conference hall, get some free food, snacks, goodies etc… it helps to make the whole environment much better..

I think if things are slightly more managed, everything will go pretty much smoothly..

I hope we don’t repeat these kind of mistakes again in the 3rd Blogcamp Pune and I am sure there will be lot of improvement in it..

And finally.. thanks to Tarun and other guys for organizing the Blogcamp Pune, if you feel, I can be of any help in organizing the Blogcamp, do let me know, I will be more than happy to join in

I attended Headstart even in Mumbai last Saturday. I was hoping to see really interesting startups but I was left pretty much wondering and thinking, why these guys start companies without even thinking about the future once. There were only couple of companies with proper business plan, rest of them lacked it. Many of the startups copied concepts from the international well established companies. I will list out some of the examples (without giving out the names obviously) of the so called startups with no plans ahead.

• There was were bunch of kids trying to start a website which will allow the users to setup websites in just few clicks. The concept was pretty good but their idea was broken, they decided to implement something social, where as a user will make template and share it with other users, so everyone can use it. I am not sure how practical it will be as the business model. Apart from this, they were not even ready for the alpha stage and they were having demo at the demo pit. In short, they were not “ready” yet..  They did not have clear picture of what they are going to do in the future. (And if they had, they could not convey it to me…)
• There was another team with the idea of making something on the basis of Getsatisfaction.com, again, no clear business plan, the voting manipulation wasn’t taken care of. The making money part wasn’t so promising at all.
• Another one was based on GetAFreelancer.com, again no proper business plan. There were no answers when I asked, there are plenty of other biggies providing same kind of services, why would people come to your site? Frankly, speaking, this guy was pretty much new to this and needed some boost, I gave him few ideas and if he works on those ideas, the things should work out for him. 
• There were many others, from something like Google docs / MS live document sharing clone, to some educational portal with great idea in mind but no proper planning etc..

I am not going to list them one by one but if you notice, everyone had some kind of base idea ready, be it based on any international site or not, but none of them had proper process lined up. No business model. Infact many of these guys never thought of any business model. They were like, we will see when things work out..

From what I understand, their thinking might be like.. we will make a good product and sell it off to any company and earn some good bucks.. (Well, I might be wrong too) But I don’t think this is what business all about… You need absolutely planning and clear picture keeping the worst conditions in mind. You should have a backup plan ready.

And most importantly, the high focus should be on money, profit.. you are spending lot of time over the project.. and for what? Social service? Just to make your name? Don’t you want your daily bread and butter? Think about money.. make a proper business plan and then just into so called startup bandwagon. If you don’t have any plans ready, I don’t think you have any right to start any business..

I know I know.. there will be people with examples like Twitter, Facebook etc.. but they all have a proper business plan, it is just that it’s been kept under the wraps and they are waiting for the right time…

I think people should not simply get into the hype of “startup” and all.. they need to sit, get back to the basic and make a plan, think about the future and think about the worst conditions.

That’s it.

Oh Yea, I am not any so called “startup guru” or anything. I am just a businessman. I understand money, profits, loss along with the great ideas. That’s it. So these are the things which always run in my mind and thought of sharing with everyone, so atleast some of the guys planning to do something new can get tips from this topic.