Serendipity and Learning

Now, playing Loco has had a strange effect on our lives. Loco is all about general knowledge/trivia and suddenly the kids are interested in collecting general knowledge. This is good, IMO. Unlike a TV quiz show where you are shouting answers at the screen, this is visceral. You play, you get a response and you see others who got the answer right or wrong and you can empathise or feel jealous or elated depending on whether you reach the 10th question or win or lose on the way. The second change I saw was startling. The kids are not very social in general - and take time to talk to people. But at a recent gathering, I saw them talk to people and get them to install the app so that we can get a 'life'. I found this behaviour fascinating. Conversation is difficult in general, a sales conversation even more difficult. And the zillion times we have nudged them to talk to people especially at family functions - results have been mixed. But now that talking to people got them ...

Or milkshakes in a bottle to be precise. A few years (maybe months) ago, somebody launched milkshakes in a bottle. And you could take the bottle home as a keepsake. This was a classic bottle - shaped like the old milk bottles and instantly was the talk of the town (in some circles atleast). I dont know who did this, but whoever did it had competition very quickly. Soon, everybody came to serve milkshakes in their own version of classic/keepsake glass bottles and within no time the novelty was lost. Couple of points: Glass bottles are good - better than plastic and if glass usage goes up - recycling of glass - which is currently a problem - goes up - and all that I agree. Keepsakes are good - atleast used to be good when I grew up - when every container worth keeping was kept and used in various hand-me-down avatars. Milkshakes are milkshakes - the only real differentiator is the quality of the ingredients and the skill of the person who makes the recipe. Here I assume that mi...

So, after multiple deletes and reinstates to goals and promises, we finally deleted Clash Royale. After we reached the Legendary Arena, of course - we are no wimps. We battled the algorithm, curbed our instincts and did everything. It was tough saying no to Clash Royale. The mind doesn't take stop contracts very well said my trainer. But we managed. This in in my mind is the end of Clash Royale in our devices. In the meantime, we learnt about this new app called Loco. And Loco has a simple premise. Ten quiz questions, live, 10 seconds per question and its a survival game. If you get all 10 answers right progressively, you win - real money. If you miss a step, you get eliminated. But, if you get friends to install the game and use your code - you can lives (one per game) and continue upto question 9 - at 10 - there no life. For what it is worth, we started playing and won a little bit of money (think sub-hundred). Now this is the start contract to rival CRs stop contract....

We all know what is Facebook and the many things about it, especially in the recent past. It was fascinating for me to read the story of the creation of Facebook in the book, the Facebook effect by David Kirkpatrick. Quite a few things struck me. About timing (there were quite a few social networks that fell by the wayside because technology was not good enough). About ideas (Facebook was by no means the first social network, but many things it learnt from others failures made it better). About being able to answer the deeper question (and this is really something - from the time it has started till about today -to think a bunch of college kids could think of something like this is inspiring to say the least). About being to prioritize (instead of trying to do everything - at the start, it was very focussed on a few things and getting those right and then added features). About having a clear direction (what we are, what we are not). A must read for someone who is in the busi...

We were in Goa and wanted to know of a way to get to another beach. And we asked a man, "How do we get to the beach". He looked perplexed with the question, pointed to the sea with an "obviously" gesture, drew a wide arc with his hand and said "like that". It was our turn to be puzzled. We had meant a land route and he meant a sea route. Thats when we realized that he was, after all, a fisherman and for him the obvious way from one beach to another was by water. It was as simple as that. And we course corrected and asked him, "How do we get there by road?" It was now his turn to be puzzled. He scratched his head and mumbled a few directions that we could not comprehend. We thanked him and left and finally found someone who explained the land route in a few steps. But that left us thinking about perspective. Very often, we see things only from our own perspective - land or water. And sometimes, for someone, it is the other perspec...

From Lost Moon: The Perilious Voyage of Apollo 13 by Jeffrey Kluger and Jim Lovell. After 1961, when President Kennedy outrageously promised to put Americans on the moon by 1970, the space agency knew the old way of doing business had to change. The cautious customs of the aeronautical inventor would continue to be observed, but this natural reserve would be enlivened by a new willingness to gamble. So, no ones ever tried building a 36-story rocket to accelerate a manned spacecraft to 25,000 miles per hour, fling it out of a circular Earth orbit and send it on a screaming beeline to the moon? Then its about time someone did. So, no one's ever contemplated how to build a bungalow-sized, four-legged ship so flimsy it can't even support its own weight, but so strong that it can take off and land under the moon's reduced gravity? Then maybe NASA was the place to do it. There is a thin line between arrogance and confidence, between hubris and true skill, and the engineers and...

I had no idea that the movie Apollo 13 was based on a book. So, when I got the chance, I read the book at full speed. The movie, as we all know, is one of the most inspirational movies. I am a huge fan of this movie and I have watched it more than a few times. So, I was curious to read the book. The book takes the story much deeper and there are quite a few differences between the book and the movie , including details about the American space program that are both inspiring and unique and which cannot be covered by a movie. So, if you are someone who likes to know more about the actual story, this book - Lost Moon: The Perilious Voyage of Apollo 13 by Jeffrey Kluger and Jim Lovell is a great read.  Having said that the movie makes the story into a far more narrow frame of reference than the book - and while the movie plays the leadership aspect, in the book one realises that it was a much much larger team effort than what the movie makes it out to be.  Tr...

Yes, and is an improv principle but and for me, in this current journey, it has a lesson that has held up well. As a consultant, a variety of work gets thrown at you. While there are the obvious not-my-skill or not-my-competency or not-my-interest work that comes your way and you anyway have to say no to it, the intriguing part is that the work that does indeed come to you is not packaged like a dream - not always. The work in its initial description comes fuzzily, appears different, sometimes impossible, sometimes tricky, sometimes with rocks embedded before the seashore. And this is what I have realised, as a consultant, work will rarely come in neatly packaged boxes. It will come as a bunch of pieces  - some interesting, some not, some disjointed, some sharp, some edges, some centres and it is your job as a consultant to embrace all that is thrown at you with a yes, and. So to give you a few examples, my very first assignment was a one-of-its-kind workshop (Yes, we have ...