Being busy and priorities

There is a busy professional like us. He is in an important client meeting and starts getting calls from unknown numbers. He keeps ignoring them. In a while he gets a call from his friend. He picks up the phone and says I am in a meeting right now, plz call later. The friend says "mother fell in the bathroom got hurt at the back of her head. She is hospitalized now, would you come over?" He says, "so sorry to hear. I am in an important meeting right now, need to visit another client later, may be late evening I will visit your mother." The friend says, "it's your mother who is hospitalized, not mine. Your neighbors have been trying to get in touch with you for so long!" No need to say how terrible the professional feels and rushes to the hospital cancelling all his "important" work to prioritize attending to his mother.



To come back to our professional life, all of us seem to be always busy, sprint commitments, release pressures, meetings and so on to attend to many important things for e g ensuring acceptance criteria is well written, code quality is right, code reviews are done well, retrospectives happen regularly and action items are worked upon, test cases are written etc. We feel we are very busy sprinting and we don't have time to look at now. We ignore signs like regression defects or other minor issues like the person above ignored the  calls from unknown numbers. We prioritise things only when some escalations happen.

The point is nobody is really very busy, it's all about priorities. So let us all like good scrum citizens get our priorities like quality, value delivery, inspecting and adapting right. Everything else will fall in place.

The "Airlift" like 4 hours

For the uninitiated, "Airlift" is a recent movie about a rescue operation of Indians from Kuwait after Saddam Hussain attacked the country. It was a shocking tale of suddenly how the ex patriots lose everything in one night n are willing to go to their homeland.



So I take off from Zurich to go back home. The plane does not take off for a while and we are delayed by an hour to start with. I start sensing the delay in arrival at Istanbul but tell myself to feel better and go off to sleep. My connecting flight to Mumbai from Istanbul is at 7:50 pm and we land at Istanbul at 7:50 instead of 6:15!! No way to get the flight now I tell myself and start rushing towards the transfer deck to get the new boarding pass for the next flight.

And now the drama starts! It's a sea of humanity here, looks like every other flight to Istanbul has got delayed and people are anxious about getting on to the next plane. I stand in the queue which is pretty huge. Just behind me is a newly married couple returning back from their honeymoon and continuously talking to each other. In the 2.5 hours that I stood there they spoke about their school marks, pranks played on siblings, respective office gossip finally ending up in all the accounts they hold in banks, investments they have made and how to save taxes!! So much power in that long wait that a couple traveled From all romantic honey talks to straight practical money talks. I spent most of my time reading some stuff and listening to music. Finally I get the new boarding pass after 2.5 hours and it's for the next day evening. The airline guy tells me to get a visa, go to hotel organised by them who will give food coupons etc and thanks me. I am too occupied by thoughts to ask him anything more...

Now a search for visa counter where they tell me that only eVisa is available for Indian passport holders. I come to the eVisa machines row, 4 of those with 3 with tags of out of order! The only working machine has a big queue of Indians trying their hands at it. Passport scanning doesn't work, so adding all details manually and then debit card pin not being accepted, it had all elements to frustrate the users reminding them how helpless they feel when technology does not work as expected. But wait, we know that things work either by "dhakka start" or "restart"! Finally it works and I get my eVisa (which looks very much like a receipt we get at ATM machines) after 5-6 people,all Indians in the queue. Then we stand in queue for immigration and once out of the airport I have no clue where to go. With phone with no working sim and no wi fi, I almost starting to feel like a refugee not knowing where to go. Well then I use the ancient method of finding information, asking multiple people face to face and finally land at the hotel desk of the airline. 

After being in another queue for submitting my details I start feeling "Aakhir Queue???"
Then we are asked to wait at a cafe and by then it's almost 11:30 or so and my mind has stopped responding or asking questions. I wait for the contact person to return with a printout of names, huddle around him, hear him saying something like "burvv yes' and understand he is trying to pronounce my name "Barve yashasree", he says "follow me" to all of us 25-30 zombie like passengers. We are then taken to the hotel by a bus. My mind starts coming back to Senses looking at the beautiful city and then even more beautiful hotel that we are taken to. I grab the Internet password and wait in another queue to get my room key. I enter my room at 12:50 am after all this drama!

Even after knowing fully that I am safe and airlines will take care of my safety n stay n food, I could not avoid feelings of helplessness and anxiety. I wonder how hundreds and thousands of people are dealing with it day in day out. They may be stranded ex patriots in Libya or Syria or just pure migrants who do not really know what's in store for them tomorrow. What a human crisis the world is facing today! Just wishing everyone strength to deal with it. Amen...

Safety Video with a UX Surprise!

Being a frequent flyer, I typically do one of the two things once I board the flight. Either I immediately go off to sleep as I most of the times have a piled up backlog of sleep or I turn on the entertainment system if there is one to catch up on some movies. With all due respect to the need to know the safety process, I hardly remember paying any attention to the same lately. 

Recently when I traveled by Qatar airlines, however I was in for a pleasant surprise. These guys have some kind of an alliance with FCB which is Football Club Barcelona. To be frank I had no idea what FCB meant. But my son knew it when I mentioned this to him later and also that they wear jersey that has Qatar Airways on it.



The kind of film on safety instructions these guys have come up with is so interesting and visually appealing to watch, I watched it all 4 times during my 4 flights :) The relation they drew with football and safety procedures was just awesome. For e g a player getting a call on field and everyone reminding him to switch it off, embracing the lower position in case one feels uncomfortable linked to penalty shootout, red card shown to smoking and so on. The best was the ladies gasping for breath when they see their favorite handsome FCB player waving to them, and the process of putting the oxygen mask explained!




This is where you can see it yourself without flying by Qatar airways.


Isn't this what user experience all about. Making things as dry as the safety instructions meaningful. Kudos to the team who conceptualized it.

I am really excited about the future of learning, the way the online learning is being gamified, the apps that are coming up for kids to learn various subjects through simulations including 3D, I feel happy days lie ahead for our smarter next generation!

Can't resist writing about TCS Game On before closing the blog. It was a game development contest held by TCS for college students. 

The students created some serious games and those sound very interesting. The future is bright indeed!

#WT20 2016 Memoirs

Lots of memories of this #WT20

Scene 1: I am in Amsterdam for a workshop in that week. Planned an outing to Rotterdam with a few colleagues. After we roamed around the place through the day and had a lot of fun, we sit in a train to take us back to Amsterdam. I get the wi fi signal and Whatsapp home. No one has time to talk to me, India Pakistan match time! I also switch to ESPN cric info app and ensure that my colleagues and others on the train get a ball to ball commentary whether they want to hear or not! A colleague whom I only met that day looks at me with eyes that say, "Do u STILL follow cricket? Really! Isn't it time to grow up for you." But I don't care and continue till India wins the match. By then people at home are also free and we talk (mostly about the match again!)



Scene 2: I am in Munich for a presentation. The day I arrive in Munich, the unfortunate Brussels incident happened. As I was done with my work and looked at tv in the hotel, I could find only 2 English channels, BBC and CNN who were only talking about the Brussels attack. The images disturbing and the "I could have been there as well" feeling that I get into after I hear about any terrorist attack dragged me further down. Stumbled upon my cricket app and suddenly read that India won by one run with Bangladesh. Curious to find more, browsed and found out about the magical last over n run out. Impressed! Cricket is indeed a drug to forget our worries temporarily.



Scene 3: I am back home, and have seen the Mauka Mauka ad before India Australia match. I have a great company of my kids, happy to have my daughter as well join the party. Last year she was getting bored and fighting for changing the channels. Kids are growing up, I say to myself. I am rooting for India to win, others though want the same are skeptical. The match turns out awesome to watch, I shout my heart out forgetting about upcoming presentations where I need to speak. Kohli shines again and my son searches in his cupboard for an old Virat t-shirt that he used to have.
We are flooded with Whatsapp messages about Dhoni and Kohli and you know who.



Scene 4: match against West Indies and we get into a discussion about how West Indies is not a country but a group of islands. My son says in Central America and I am puzzled! I was unaware and express my doubts. My son is pretty confident and asks for a bet on it. I deny doubting my own belief and we see the map! Oops it's indeed in Central America. India loses the match and I talk about being a sport and we may end losing things in life, but we need to accept it in stride. My daughter declares her boredom of listening to this lecture through yawning. My son is listening or at least pretending to listen to me. I guess he has picked this from his father :)

Scene 5: final match. We watch in between as India is not playing. We all root for West Indies specially for their sportsmanship, and my kids love them from IPL matches. The last over is mesmerizing, a perfect example of "I can do that", "never say never", and "never give up, believe yourself" attitude. We are awed and kids also join in the West Indies team as they dance to the champions team. Work hard, party harder!!

Mumbai chi Thandi :)

Inspired by the pleasant cool mornings in National Park, Mumbai,

गुलाबी थंडीत हसली मुंबई
ओढून घेतेय मऊ दुलाई

तोंडातून वाफा पाण्यावर धुके
झाडांचे रंग फ़िके फ़िके

ऊन सूर्याचा पत्ता नाही
सकाळ जणू साखर झोपेत राही

काढ़ा स्वेटर मफलर शाल
आत्ता नाही तर कधी मिरवाल

घाम विसरून खुश होणार आम्ही
गुलाबी थंडी आमच्या मैत्रिणी

अशीच कधीतरी येत जा
मुंबईकरांना भेटत जा

Huh! Likes and Comments are meaningless!!

Recently during a Social Media Analytics conference I heard a very interesting premise about what we should measure as part of the social media strategy. The speaker mentioned "likes and comments are meaningless"

He referred to many things that are relevant from the Facebook pages of organisation 

• You get what you measure! So if u measure likes n comments on FB, that's what you get. That may not translate to revenue or business growth
• The concept of Like Farms that would help the social media manager to reach their targets of number of likes and comments

The secret psychologist in me was trying to relate it back to how we would think about likes and comments on FB in our personal lives.

• Scene 1: We love it when people like or comment on our profile picture changes. Instant gratification :) I look forward to people's reactions and I guess everyone does. My young nephew was recently so curious about the number of likes to one of his photos uploaded on FB. 

• Scene 2: We have some friends who would like irrespective of what we post. May be they are  really happy that we posted something or it's a moral support or just encouragement that they want to give us

• Scene 3: Likes and comments do not mean that people have read what one posted, specially if one has posted links. I can say that as the FB likes do not equate the number of reads on my personal blog!

• Scene 4: We come across some random cute baby or mothers or some emotionally appealing photos and like it without thinking much. Not that we think while on FB. I have always wondered who posts these and what the purpose could be. May be someone is desperately trying to seek likes? May be its some strategy to make money through marketing?

• Scene 5: One of my friends (in real life as well as on FB) posted on FB some sort of a test to see who actually reads what is posted and some more stuff. May be a social experiment? Would wait for him to talk about his observations and conclusions :)

• Scene 6: All picnic spots and gatherings are abuzz with people of all ages, shapes, sizes clicking their next best DP so that they can gather the most likes and comments ! I enjoy observing the madness as I also click a couple of selfies and groupies !!

• Scene 7: I can not close the blog without mentioning this old incident. Few years back my son made some new friends during a trip and they were talking. Soon it turned into a bragging discussion of I have this and that. I heard my son claiming that his mother is the best as she has 93 friends!! I was wondering where that magic number came from and then he mentioned that he had seen my FB profile. Over the years I guess I have made more friends in real life as well as on FB, hope that grows as I grow older.

All in all in this age of crowdsourcing and automation, even the social media and the impact it brings on human behavior needs to be looked at closely. Digital Humanity is the new buzzword and already part of my reading list!