Preparing a Talk

Many people – especially technical folks like me – focus way too much on the data that they want to present to their audience. Tom always asks me how I want the audience to feel after my talk. Before I learned his technique, my answer would be something like, “I want them to feel that they understand the design goals and architectural details of ?”

At this point Tom would interrupt: “Feelings are one word. Angry. Proud. You know – emotions.” You can have a small phrase describing what the feeling is about. “Disappointed in our performance.” “Proud of our new release.”

Next, Tom would ask what I wanted people to do differently after my presentation. He argued: “If you don’t want them to do anything different, why are you wasting your time talking with them?” If you’ve reached an important milestone in a project, like a key code-freeze date, you might want people to feel proud of what they’ve accomplished so far, but to keep working hard until they’re done. If a project is way off track, the feeling of disappointment in the progress so far could motivate people to accept and engage a new approach. If a competitor is beating you, perhaps anger will help drive action. Part of the trick is to choose actions and emotions that naturally reinforce each other.

When you are clear on the feelings and actions that you hope to inspire with your presentation, then, and only then, should you start to worry about the content – about what data to share to inspire those feelings. You can say, “I want you to feel excited about what you did,” but it might work better to show the sales figures or benchmark results that prove people did a good job. Then the audience will naturally be excited. Or if the results are bad, naturally disappointed.

When I start with feelings and actions, it makes my presentations much better. Good content is important, but it’s only a tool. Feelings and actions are the goal.

At first, I struggled with Tom’s method because I wanted to share too much information. Now, I’ve learned to appreciate the elegance of finding the smallest amount of data required to drive the feelings and actions I want. For exhaustive detail, a web site or white paper is a much better communication tool. Sometimes go read the white paper is the action I want to inspire. Even in a classroom setting, lectures don’t replace textbooks.

I used to worry that removing details would result in over-simplified presentations. Now I believe that my job as a public speaker is to over-simplify.

But I still try not to over-over-simplify.

-- reference: http://blogs.netapp.com/dave/

We are Virginia Tech

We are Virginia Tech.

We are sad today, and we will be sad for quite a while. We are not moving on, we are embracing our mourning.

We are Virginia Tech.

We are strong enough to stand tall tearlessly, we are brave enough to bend to cry, and we are sad enough to know that we must laugh again.

We are Virginia Tech.

We do not understand this tragedy. We know we did nothing to deserve it, but neither does a child in Africa dying of AIDS, neither do the invisible children walking the night away to avoid being captured by the rogue army, neither does the baby elephant watching his community being devastated for ivory, neither does the Mexican child looking for fresh water, neither does the Appalachian infant killed in the middle of the night in his crib in the home his father built with his own hands being run over by a boulder because the land was destabilized. No one deserves a tragedy.

We are Virginia Tech.

The Hokie Nation embraces our own and reaches out with open heart and hands to those who offer their hearts and minds. We are strong, and brave, and innocent, and unafraid. We are better than we think and not quite what we want to be. We are alive to the imaginations and the possibilities. We will continue to invent the future through our blood and tears and through all our sadness.

We are the Hokies.

We will prevail.

We will prevail.

We will prevail.

We are Virginia Tech.

~ Nikki Giovanni, University Distinguished Professor, poet, activist

Tragedy at Virginia Tech

This incident that happened today at Virginia Tech would go in US history, albeit in a wrong way and I am sad to be a part of this.

I was boarding the Blacksburg Transit (BT) bus today morning and we were just about to move; when the BT radio cracked with a siren to stop all buses going to campus. Apparently, there was a gunman loose on campus. I immediately returned home to log on to the internet and check the status. Within minutes, we got an email from the university saying all campus was in lock-down mode. Our local news channel confirmed the death of one person in the shooting. News slowly trickled in of more casualties initially starting with 7 and moving to 32 by the end of the day; all caused because of a shooting by a guy who reportedly shot 40 shots. Dateline NBC aired interviews of 2 students who witnessed the incident and luckily survived this tragedy.

This shootout surpasses all previous records and VT is now part of history for the worst ever campus shootings. We all are shocked to find all this happening in such a "safe" town of Blacksburg. It will take a long time in healing and regaining VT's pride as a great educational institution. Let us all pray for those victims and hope such a thing never happens again anywhere.

Past 2 months

Followers of this blog will notice a long gap. Worry not friends, i m still alive. The last two months have been a flyer, literally. I travelled coast to coast a couple of times. But all that has settled down now - the patience has 'paid' off, again literally. I have decided to join NetApp (NASDAQ: NTAP), a leading storage software company. I am all excited to be a part of this great company which ranks in the top 10 Fortune Best Places to Work For, even above the likes of Microsoft!

Ok, that was the journey till mid-March. I was in Blacksburg for the entire last month (i cant believe it myself). Had to catch up on my thesis implementation. Once things began to work and experiments gave success, i moved to writing. I have almost finished writing a draft at this point and passed it on to my advisor for reviews. Today, is the 1st time in last two months that I dont have anything to work on ( i expect to get more work tomorrow after my meeting; but this very moment needs to be enjoyed to the fullest). Ate loads of Kaju -draksh icecream that we got from an Indian store, followed by rasgullas!...Blogging seems to have actually helped me in writing skills - thank you Blogger!

Meet my Valentine

This year's V-day is going to be a memorable one. I am going to introduce u to my valentine..take a guess..who might it be..bolo bolo, socho , socho..accha chalo bata hi deta huun..its Washington DC airport!!

Now listen up..heres what happened...i am returning from San Diego and I land safely in DC. Then i come to know that the weather is real bad here with lots of snow making it unsafe for flight departure..so my flight to Roanoke gets cancelled.
I try to pacify myself a bit saying its ok, u r not the only person affected by this..there are thousands of others here who have even missed international flights due to this....i wait in the United Customer service queue for 2 hrs only to be given the boarding flight for my flight for Feb 14, ya V-day.

I promptly book a hotel in DC and spend the night there. Then i come back on V-day to board my morning flight, but since conditions havent improved, i am rebooked for a flight for 10pm that night...now this is no more fun...i decide to make some plans for the day at the airport only hoping that the flight will depart at night...

Firstly, i purchase internet for a day costing $10 out of my pocket and do my emails quickly. But i realize that, emails wont keep me busy for the day, so I make up my mind to catch up on thesis work...yes coding at the airport, grab a coffee and some cookies and code for food..drink, code, drink, code..ok its lunch time and i am caught up in a strange coding issue. i eat a hearty meal at Subway, order a Hot Chai Latte and sit back...the tea immediately helps to solve my problem and i realize i have done enough for the day!!

So now, i get into serious orkutting, blogging (which is why you r reading this one)..probably destiny wanted me to experience V-day with Washington airport...wish me luck so that i reach BBurg safely by today!

Finding Neverland

Here's a list of places i have visited so far:
Blacksburg, Roanoke, Washington DC, Boston, Tampa, Gainesville, Orlando, Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, Raleigh, Santa Ana, Irvine, Malibu, Bakersfield, Houston, Atlanta.

Here's whats left (interestingly, this list is short!!):
New York, Chicago, Grand Canyon, Pittsburg, Salt Lake City Utah....this shouldnt take long if history is an indicator.

Catching up!

hmm..its been almost 2 months since my last blog and its time to catch up to events in life...bro got married, everyone's happy back home and things are finally settling down in Blacksburg aka Kalewadi, Virginia. The semester started on a fine note with lots of desi home made sweets to relish...and Chitale's bakarwadi too!

Then i had my first meeting with my advisor and it started heating up, although BBurg shows -7 degrees Fahrenheit currently..
need to get some real work done in a short span of time...interviews have picked up some pace as well and i have started my usual habit of going places...my hidden success i wud term it..akki wud understand this better...

hope to reenter the blogging world..lets Go Bloggers..lets go Hokies!

The day arrives

At last, after a really long wait, its december 12th today..and my journey to Swades begins right now..cant express how excited i am..really looking forward to things i missed during my stay in BBurg. Thats how life is..no pain, no pleasure..and pain always comes first!

Like the nice Roanoke airport..checkin took 10 min and we have free internet here..so grabbed the chance to catchup on some blogging..as i sit here..memories of home flash in my head..and i say..just wait for another 36 hrs for homecoming..i assume home must be all set to welcome me..there has been a lot of renovation and the marriage preps make the atmosphere all the more exciting and merry...my blogs will be infrequent for a month from now on.but who cares..watched swades the other day and i cud connect to the story much better now..Ashutosh Gowariker has done a gr8 job in making such a film...and surprisingly, SK lives upto the expectations by not introducing his "hehhhheeeeee" ishtyle..
Anyways..bye bye blogger..

Exam week

and now comes the climax of the Fall semester..exam time folks..wear the Orange Effect t-shirt which says "Time to go to Work". The Reading Day concept out here is totally different compared to the month-long PL we get in Pune..boy i remember studying 10-12 hrs in PL and watching my favorite sit-coms in breaks..in fact thats the time i used to pick up on long lost serials and aai used to say that I "adjust" breaks in the serial times..so am i really studying?..well that was 1 way to relax i guess getting involved in saas-bahu types and enjoying studies as a side-dish.

Now i have a REALLY BIG CARROT at the end of exams..my trip to Swades..plan to watch the film immediately after exams so that i get a feel of homeland. I tried my hand at some new recipes like Pohe, Omlette..we ran out of groceries and I had to put on my thinking cap to make use of the best available resources without spending time to go to Walmart..that reminds me i need to buy loads of "Kisses" and "Harshe"..have packing to do as well..havent touched my bags since internship time..in short a happening week and looking fwd to spin the earth faster!

On your mark

hmm...its 14 november today - whats so special abt it?..well for some it might be their birthday, for some it is World Usability Day and for me its 30 days from homecoming....14 december ki chai hum Pune me piyenge!!...and interestingly, these 30 days are crucial for me in many ways..lot of work to be done, deadlines to meet and jobs to be searched, besides Thanksgiving turkey at my host's place. I just have 1 more written exam at Virginia Tech, probably the last one in my career, in my life (does that sound too farfetched??).. i m just being optimistic...exams in VT guve me nightmares.

We screwed our software engg project and a lot of time had to be spent in damage control. It gave insights to real world scenario and helped me learn a lot..after all isnt failure the stepping stone to success..but does failure HAVE TO be a stepping stone?.. i mean cant we always get it right the first time..i guess its not a perfect world..even Windows had its own problems initially, rather still has..so maybe there is nothing like perfect..each failure is an OFI - opportunity for improvement..hmm..sounds like positive attitude...get ready boy.. u have a long road ahead!

Cassata

dont have anything specific to write abt in this blog, but still i want to write something..you know its a good way to spend time after all, i dont want the 15 days since my last blog go missing in history just because i was too lazy to write anything today!

life is as it should be for a graduate student studying Computer Science - study, study and more study..did i say study??.
2nd midterms are round the corner as is dada's engagement, but being here i cant do much except call and say a big HI....
i had a fight with the linux kernel last week and since then, it has failed to behave as expected..it becomes nervous and doesnt respond..looks like i will have to take him for a ride to get its mood right!!
Algorithms course sounds more interesting as exams approach, its just the sheer pressure that makes u love the subject; besides its helping me in other ways too. We had a nice photo session at the university "Class of 2007"..hmm looks like i will graduate finally next semester.. or at least the authorities tell me i will..time to be kicked out soon..better get back to work.

Friday eve

This friday evening made it upto my blog...havent had so much fun in a past few weeks. I had a gift coupon for Buffalo Wild wings, courtesy Scion car test ride which gave me a free T-shirt too. Now, the question was how to use the coupon effectively and before expiry?..Lab mates at VBI - Dipti, Sanket and Farid were interested in eating out..and so the plan was made. We ate some nice appetizers followed by wings. Our waitress Michelle, oh what shud i say abt her..she deserved a life better than that!
During the dinner, the plan was made for a movie at NRV Mall. We drove around 8pm, but unfortunately tickets were sold out for Departed. Then we decided to roam around and shop for my Pune trip..and suddenly everyone wanted something from the mall. We spent an hour at JC Penney. Then again, we thought maybe we could watch the next show for Departed and immediately went ahead and booked the tickets. Now the question was to spend the rest of our time. An idea although not very suitable for that occasion popped up - grocery shopping at Walmart!..ok it started off wtih buying a few essentials but ended up in a cart full of items. Then we drove back to the theatre, enjoyed the movie...i was surprised that it was full show and lots of popcorn here and there..

Came back home at 1am..long evening indeed!

Lets get Nerdy

If you want to attract nerds, you need more than a town with personality. You need a town with the right personality. Nerds are a distinct subset of the creative class, with different tastes from the rest. You can see this most clearly in New York, which attracts a lot of creative people, but few nerds. [5]

What nerds like is the kind of town where people walk around smiling. This excludes LA, where no one walks at all, and also New York, where people walk, but not smiling. When I was in grad school in Boston, a friend came to visit from New York. On the subway back from the airport she asked "Why is everyone smiling?" I looked and they weren't smiling. They just looked like they were compared to the facial expressions she was used to.

If you've lived in New York, you know where these facial expressions come from. It's the kind of place where your mind may be excited, but your body knows it's having a bad time. People don't so much enjoy living there as endure it for the sake of the excitement. And if you like certain kinds of excitement, New York is incomparable. It's a hub of glamour, a magnet for all the shorter half-life isotopes of style and fame.

Nerds don't care about glamour, so to them the appeal of New York is a mystery. People who like New York will pay a fortune for a small, dark, noisy apartment in order to live in a town where the cool people are really cool. A nerd looks at that deal and sees only: pay a fortune for a small, dark, noisy apartment.

Nerds will pay a premium to live in a town where the smart people are really smart, but you don't have to pay as much for that. It's supply and demand: glamour is popular, so you have to pay a lot for it.

Most nerds like quieter pleasures. They like cafes instead of clubs; used bookshops instead of fashionable clothing shops; hiking instead of dancing; sunlight instead of tall buildings. A nerd's idea of paradise is Berkeley or Boulder.

(extracted from my previous post..this deserved special mention)

Wanna create Silicon valley?

Could you reproduce Silicon Valley elsewhere, or is there something unique about it?

It wouldn't be surprising if it were hard to reproduce in other countries, because you couldn't reproduce it in most of the US either. What does it take to make a silicon valley even here?

What it takes is the right people. If you could get the right ten thousand people to move from Silicon Valley to Buffalo, Buffalo would become Silicon Valley. [1]

That's a striking departure from the past. Up till a couple decades ago, geography was destiny for cities. All great cities were located on waterways, because cities made money by trade, and water was the only economical way to ship.

Now you could make a great city anywhere, if you could get the right people to move there. So the question of how to make a silicon valley becomes: who are the right people, and how do you get them to move?

Two Types

I think you only need two kinds of people to create a technology hub: rich people and nerds. They're the limiting reagents in the reaction that produces startups, because they're the only ones present when startups get started. Everyone else will move.

Observation bears this out: within the US, towns have become startup hubs if and only if they have both rich people and nerds. Few startups happen in Miami, for example, because although it's full of rich people, it has few nerds. It's not the kind of place nerds like.

Whereas Pittsburgh has the opposite problem: plenty of nerds, but no rich people. The top US Computer Science departments are said to be MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, and Carnegie-Mellon. MIT yielded Route 128. Stanford and Berkeley yielded Silicon Valley. But Carnegie-Mellon? The record skips at that point. Lower down the list, the University of Washington yielded a high-tech community in Seattle, and the University of Texas at Austin yielded one in Austin. But what happened in Pittsburgh? And in Ithaca, home of Cornell, which is also high on the list?

I grew up in Pittsburgh and went to college at Cornell, so I can answer for both. The weather is terrible, particularly in winter, and there's no interesting old city to make up for it, as there is in Boston. Rich people don't want to live in Pittsburgh or Ithaca. So while there are plenty of hackers who could start startups, there's no one to invest in them.

Not Bureaucrats

Do you really need the rich people? Wouldn't it work to have the government invest in the nerds? No, it would not. Startup investors are a distinct type of rich people. They tend to have a lot of experience themselves in the technology business. This (a) helps them pick the right startups, and (b) means they can supply advice and connections as well as money. And the fact that they have a personal stake in the outcome makes them really pay attention.

Bureaucrats by their nature are the exact opposite sort of people from startup investors. The idea of them making startup investments is comic. It would be like mathematicians running Vogue-- or perhaps more accurately, Vogue editors running a math journal. [2]

Though indeed, most things bureaucrats do, they do badly. We just don't notice usually, because they only have to compete against other bureaucrats. But as startup investors they'd have to compete against pros with a great deal more experience and motivation.

Even corporations that have in-house VC groups generally forbid them to make their own investment decisions. Most are only allowed to invest in deals where some reputable private VC firm is willing to act as lead investor.

Not Buildings

If you go to see Silicon Valley, what you'll see are buildings. But it's the people that make it Silicon Valley, not the buildings. I read occasionally about attempts to set up "technology parks" in other places, as if the active ingredient of Silicon Valley were the office space. An article about Sophia Antipolis bragged that companies there included Cisco, Compaq, IBM, NCR, and Nortel. Don't the French realize these aren't startups?

Building office buildings for technology companies won't get you a silicon valley, because the key stage in the life of a startup happens before they want that kind of space. The key stage is when they're three guys operating out of an apartment. Wherever the startup is when it gets funded, it will stay. The defining quality of Silicon Valley is not that Intel or Apple or Google have offices there, but that they were started there.

So if you want to reproduce Silicon Valley, what you need to reproduce is those two or three founders sitting around a kitchen table deciding to start a company. And to reproduce that you need those people.

Universities

The exciting thing is, all you need are the people. If you could attract a critical mass of nerds and investors to live somewhere, you could reproduce Silicon Valley. And both groups are highly mobile. They'll go where life is good. So what makes a place good to them?

What nerds like is other nerds. Smart people will go wherever other smart people are. And in particular, to great universities. In theory there could be other ways to attract them, but so far universities seem to be indispensable. Within the US, there are no technology hubs without first-rate universities-- or at least, first-rate computer science departments.

So if you want to make a silicon valley, you not only need a university, but one of the top handful in the world. It has to be good enough to act as a magnet, drawing the best people from thousands of miles away. And that means it has to stand up to existing magnets like MIT and Stanford.

This sounds hard. Actually it might be easy. My professor friends, when they're deciding where they'd like to work, consider one thing above all: the quality of the other faculty. What attracts professors is good colleagues. So if you managed to recruit, en masse, a significant number of the best young researchers, you could create a first-rate university from nothing overnight. And you could do that for surprisingly little. If you paid 200 people hiring bonuses of $3 million apiece, you could put together a faculty that would bear comparison with any in the world. And from that point the chain reaction would be self-sustaining. So whatever it costs to establish a mediocre university, for an additional half billion or so you could have a great one. [3]

Personality

However, merely creating a new university would not be enough to start a silicon valley. The university is just the seed. It has to be planted in the right soil, or it won't germinate. Plant it in the wrong place, and you just create Carnegie-Mellon.

To spawn startups, your university has to be in a town that has attractions other than the university. It has to be a place where investors want to live, and students want to stay after they graduate.

The two like much the same things, because most startup investors are nerds themselves. So what do nerds look for in a town? Their tastes aren't completely different from other people's, because a lot of the towns they like most in the US are also big tourist destinations: San Francisco, Boston, Seattle. But their tastes can't be quite mainstream either, because they dislike other big tourist destinations, like New York, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas.

There has been a lot written lately about the "creative class." The thesis seems to be that as wealth derives increasingly from ideas, cities will prosper only if they attract those who have them. That is certainly true; in fact it was the basis of Amsterdam's prosperity 400 years ago.

A lot of nerd tastes they share with the creative class in general. For example, they like well-preserved old neighborhoods instead of cookie-cutter suburbs, and locally-owned shops and restaurants instead of national chains. Like the rest of the creative class, they want to live somewhere with personality.

What exactly is personality? I think it's the feeling that each building is the work of a distinct group of people. A town with personality is one that doesn't feel mass-produced. So if you want to make a startup hub-- or any town to attract the "creative class"-- you probably have to ban large development projects. When a large tract has been developed by a single organization, you can always tell. [4]

Most towns with personality are old, but they don't have to be. Old towns have two advantages: they're denser, because they were laid out before cars, and they're more varied, because they were built one building at a time. You could have both now. Just have building codes that ensure density, and ban large scale developments.

A corollary is that you have to keep out the biggest developer of all: the government. A government that asks "How can we build a silicon valley?" has probably ensured failure by the way they framed the question. You don't build a silicon valley; you let one grow.

Nerds

If you want to attract nerds, you need more than a town with personality. You need a town with the right personality. Nerds are a distinct subset of the creative class, with different tastes from the rest. You can see this most clearly in New York, which attracts a lot of creative people, but few nerds. [5]

What nerds like is the kind of town where people walk around smiling. This excludes LA, where no one walks at all, and also New York, where people walk, but not smiling. When I was in grad school in Boston, a friend came to visit from New York. On the subway back from the airport she asked "Why is everyone smiling?" I looked and they weren't smiling. They just looked like they were compared to the facial expressions she was used to.

If you've lived in New York, you know where these facial expressions come from. It's the kind of place where your mind may be excited, but your body knows it's having a bad time. People don't so much enjoy living there as endure it for the sake of the excitement. And if you like certain kinds of excitement, New York is incomparable. It's a hub of glamour, a magnet for all the shorter half-life isotopes of style and fame.

Nerds don't care about glamour, so to them the appeal of New York is a mystery. People who like New York will pay a fortune for a small, dark, noisy apartment in order to live in a town where the cool people are really cool. A nerd looks at that deal and sees only: pay a fortune for a small, dark, noisy apartment.

Nerds will pay a premium to live in a town where the smart people are really smart, but you don't have to pay as much for that. It's supply and demand: glamour is popular, so you have to pay a lot for it.

Most nerds like quieter pleasures. They like cafes instead of clubs; used bookshops instead of fashionable clothing shops; hiking instead of dancing; sunlight instead of tall buildings. A nerd's idea of paradise is Berkeley or Boulder.

Youth

It's the young nerds who start startups, so it's those specifically the city has to appeal to. The startup hubs in the US are all young-feeling towns. This doesn't mean they have to be new. Cambridge has the oldest town plan in America, but it feels young because it's full of students.

What you can't have, if you want to create a silicon valley, is a large, existing population of stodgy people. It would be a waste of time to try to reverse the fortunes of a declining industrial town like Detroit or Philadelphia by trying to encourage startups. Those places have too much momentum in the wrong direction. You're better off starting with a blank slate in the form of a small town. Or better still, if there's a town young people already flock to, that one.

The Bay Area was a magnet for the young and optimistic for decades before it was associated with technology. It was a place people went in search of something new. And so it became synonymous with California nuttiness. There's still a lot of that there. If you wanted to start a new fad-- a new way to focus one's "energy," for example, or a new category of things not to eat-- the Bay Area would be the place to do it. But a place that tolerates oddness in the search for the new is exactly what you want in a startup hub, because economically that's what startups are. Most good startup ideas seem a little crazy; if they were obviously good ideas, someone would have done them already.

(How many people are going to want computers in their houses? What, another search engine?)

That's the connection between technology and liberalism. Without exception the high-tech cities in the US are also the most liberal. But it's not because liberals are smarter that this is so. It's because liberal cities tolerate odd ideas, and smart people by definition have odd ideas.

Conversely, a town that gets praised for being "solid" or representing "traditional values" may be a fine place to live, but it's never going to succeed as a startup hub. The 2004 presidential election, though a disaster in other respects, conveniently supplied us with a county-by-county map of such places. [6]

To attract the young, a town must have an intact center. In most American cities the center has been abandoned, and the growth, if any, is in the suburbs. Most American cities have been turned inside out. But none of the startup hubs has: not San Francisco, or Boston, or Seattle. They all have intact centers. [7] My guess is that no city with a dead center could be turned into a startup hub. Young people don't want to live in the suburbs.

Within the US, the two cities I think could most easily be turned into new silicon valleys are Boulder and Portland. Both have the kind of effervescent feel that attracts the young. They're each only a great university short of becoming a silicon valley, if they wanted to.

Time

A great university near an attractive town. Is that all it takes? That was all it took to make the original Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley traces its origins to William Shockley, one of the inventors of the transistor. He did the research that won him the Nobel Prize at Bell Labs, but when he started his own company in 1956 he moved to Palo Alto to do it. At the time that was an odd thing to do. Why did he? Because he had grown up there and remembered how nice it was. Now Palo Alto is suburbia, but then it was a charming college town-- a charming college town with perfect weather and San Francisco only an hour away.

The companies that rule Silicon Valley now are all descended in various ways from Shockley Semiconductor. Shockley was a difficult man, and in 1957 his top people-- "the traitorous eight"-- left to start a new company, Fairchild Semiconductor. Among them were Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce, who went on to found Intel, and Eugene Kleiner, who founded the VC firm Kleiner Perkins. Forty-two years later, Kleiner Perkins funded Google, and the partner responsible for the deal was John Doerr, who came to Silicon Valley in 1974 to work for Intel.

So although a lot of the newest companies in Silicon Valley don't make anything out of silicon, there always seem to be multiple links back to Shockley. There's a lesson here: startups beget startups. People who work for startups start their own. People who get rich from startups fund new ones. I suspect this kind of organic growth is the only way to produce a startup hub, because it's the only way to grow the expertise you need.

That has two important implications. The first is that you need time to grow a silicon valley. The university you could create in a couple years, but the startup community around it has to grow organically. The cycle time is limited by the time it takes a company to succeed, which probably averages about five years.

The other implication of the organic growth hypothesis is that you can't be somewhat of a startup hub. You either have a self-sustaining chain reaction, or not. Observation confirms this too: cities either have a startup scene, or they don't. There is no middle ground. Chicago has the third largest metropolitan area in America. As source of startups it's negligible compared to Seattle, number 15.

The good news is that the initial seed can be quite small. Shockley Semiconductor, though itself not very successful, was big enough. It brought a critical mass of experts in an important new technology together in a place they liked enough to stay.

Competing

Of course, a would-be silicon valley faces an obstacle the original one didn't: it has to compete with Silicon Valley. Can that be done? Probably.

One of Silicon Valley's biggest advantages is its venture capital firms. This was not a factor in Shockley's day, because VC funds didn't exist. In fact, Shockley Semiconductor and Fairchild Semiconductor were not startups at all in our sense. They were subsidiaries-- of Beckman Instruments and Fairchild Camera and Instrument respectively. Those companies were apparently willing to establish subsidiaries wherever the experts wanted to live.

Venture investors, however, prefer to fund startups within an hour's drive. For one, they're more likely to notice startups nearby. But when they do notice startups in other towns they prefer them to move. They don't want to have to travel to attend board meetings, and in any case the odds of succeeding are higher in a startup hub.

The centralizing effect of venture firms is a double one: they cause startups to form around them, and those draw in more startups through acquisitions. And although the first may be weakening because it's now so cheap to start some startups, the second seems as strong as ever. Three of the most admired "Web 2.0" companies were started outside the usual startup hubs, but two of them have already been reeled in through acquisitions.

Such centralizing forces make it harder for new silicon valleys to get started. But by no means impossible. Ultimately power rests with the founders. A startup with the best people will beat one with funding from famous VCs, and a startup that was sufficiently successful would never have to move. So a town that could exert enough pull over the right people could resist and perhaps even surpass Silicon Valley.

For all its power, Silicon Valley has a great weakness: the paradise Shockley found in 1956 is now one giant parking lot. San Francisco and Berkeley are great, but they're forty miles away. Silicon Valley proper is soul-crushing suburban sprawl. It has fabulous weather, which makes it significantly better than the soul-crushing sprawl of most other American cities. But a competitor that managed to avoid sprawl would have real leverage. All a city needs is to be the kind of place the next traitorous eight look at and say "I want to stay here," and that would be enough to get the chain reaction started.

(taken from http://www.paulgraham.com/siliconvalley.html)

Pleasure in Pain?

These days I have been caught in a weird emotional state. Whenever a thought about home passes in my mind, I feel like listening to songs in my native language Marathi. The more I hear them, the more I like them, but at the same time it gives me a feeling of pain. However, the urge to listen to them is so strong, that I still go ahead and try to overcome the pain. A similar feeling arises when I listen to Swades "ye jo des hai tera, swades hai tera, tuze hai pukaraaaa..and the pain goes "aaa", "mai vapas aungaaa again the "aaa" from Border". I think i am thinking too much..but cant help it..can I?

Anyways, trying some meditation to soothen my nerves and take control of emotions..its indeed a game of nerves!

Heart beats faster

hmm..long time since I actually sat down and wrote a blog on my own. This blog is different because I am writing it from my lab - why?..because I am stuck in a mess of C++ code which is hard to debug and I have no help in sight. Imagine having a unite testing frameowrk wrapped by another and now I am adding another layer to it..hundreds of files and tests to be integrated..and the bottomline..it should finally be automated with minimal changes to existing code.

That aside, its some 70 days for "homecoming" and i am all excited about it. These days i keep dreaming of what will happen when I visit home, how i will spend my "quality" time, etc. Shopping has already started with gifts coming from all over - online, Walmart, Google.com. My heart beats faster as each day passes.

College has started becoming monotonous - its the middle of the semester u see. Need to do something interesting to keep up, i wish i can enjoy a bit in the Fall break. To top it all, we dont have Algorithms class the entire next week, nor do i have thesis meeting..so i m gonna be free. God, take me to good sunny California once again..let me visit the beach, eat at the best hotels in So-Cal..

The Career Fair marked the beginning of the Fall interview season. Hope to make the most out of it this time..at least preparing better. Had a cool tailgate party with my host..ate lots of apple pie cake and fruit punch.
Loads of good food at my home sweet home, good ole Pune!

Why Indians are US's best immigrants

1. Education. The Census Bureau says that 63.9% of Indians over 25 hold at least a bachelor's degree, compared with the national average of 24.4%. Media reports routinely profile graduates from one Indian college -- the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT).

This is a great school, but most successful Indians I know aren't IIT graduates. Neither are the doctors, journalists, motel owners, or the majority of technology executives. Their education comes from a broad range of colleges in India and the U.S. They believe that education is the best way to rise above poverty and hardship.

2. Upbringing. For my generation, what was most socially acceptable was to become a doctor, engineer, or businessperson. Therefore, the emphasis was on either learning science or math or becoming an entrepreneur.

3. Hard work. With India's competitive and rote-based education system, children are forced to spend the majority of their time on their schooling. For better or for worse, it's work, work, and more work for anyone with access to education.

4. Determination to overcome obstacles. In a land of over a billion people with a corrupt government, weak infrastructure, and limited opportunities, it takes a lot to simply survive, let alone get ahead.

Indians learn to be resilient, battle endless obstacles, and make the most of what they have. In India, you're on your own and learn to work around the problems that the state and society create for you.

5. Entrepreneurial spirit. As corporate strategist C K Prahalad notes in his interview with BusinessWeek's Pete Engardio, amidst the poverty, hustle, and bustle of overcrowded India is a "beehive of entrepreneurialism and creativity." After observing street markets, Prahalad says that "every individual is engaged in a business of some kind -- whether it is selling single cloves of garlic, squeezing sugar cane juice for pennies a glass, or hauling TVs." This entrepreneurial sprit is something that most Indians grow up with.

6. Recognizing diversity. Indians hold many ethnic, racial, gender, and caste biases. But to succeed, they learn to overlook or adapt these biases when necessary. There are six major religions in India, and the Indian constitution recognizes 22 regional languages. Every region in the country has its own customs and character.

7. Humility. Talk to almost any immigrant, regardless of origin, and he will share stories about leaving social status behind in his home country and working his way up from the bottom of the ladder in his adopted land. It's a humbling process, but humility is an asset in entrepreneurship. You learn many valuable lessons when you start from scratch and work your way to success.

8. Family support/values. In the absence of a social safety net, the family takes on a very important role in Indian culture. Family members provide all kinds of support and guidance to those in need.

9. Financial management. Indians generally pride themselves on being fiscally conservative. Their businesses usually watch every penny and spend within their means.

10. Forming and leveraging networks. Indians immigrants found that one of the secrets to success was to learn from those who had paved the trails.

Some examples: Successful Indian technologists in Silicon Valley formed an organization called The Indus Entrepreneurs to mentor other entrepreneurs and provide a forum for networking. TiE is reputed to have helped launch hundreds of startups, some of which achieved billions in market capitalization. This was a group I turned to when I needed help.

Top Indian journalists and academics created the South Asian Journalists Association (SAJA) to provide networking and assistance to newcomers. SAJA runs journalism conferences and workshops, and provides scholarships to aspiring South-Asian student journalists.

In the entertainment industry, fledgling filmmakers formed the South Asian American Films and Arts Association (SAAFA). Their mission is the promotion of South Asian cinematic and artistic endeavors, and mentoring newcomers.

11. Giving back. The most successful entrepreneurs I know believe in giving back to the community and society that has given them so much opportunity. TiE founders invested great effort to ensure that their organization was open, inclusive, and integrated with mainstream American society. Their No. 1 rule was that their charter members would give without taking. SAJA officers work for top publications and universities, yet they volunteer their evenings and weekends to run an organization to assist newcomers.

12. Integration and acceptance. The Pew Global Attitudes Project, which conducts worldwide public opinion surveys, has shown that Indians predominantly hold favorable opinions of the U.S. When Indians immigrate to the U.S, they usually come to share the American dream and work hard to integrate.

Indians have achieved more overall business success in less time in the U.S. than any other recent immigrant group. They have shown what can be achieved by integrating themselves into U.S. society and taking advantage of all the opportunities the country offers.

Disclaimer: This article is taken from Rediff.com dated Sept 20, 2006.

Mixed bag

Last week passed by real quick. The courses have got the pace now, i am loaded with work. Our Software Engg project looks intersting..designing a plant sale software for our Horticulture club. It involved a lot of real-life expereinces like meeting the client to collect requirements, validating them. This looks even good when our clients are 2 blondes - u know what i mean!
Algorithms as usual seems scary..lot of maths and proofs which i dont seem to be in touch for a long time. Then I watched FlightPlan on Friday night and Lage raho Munnabhai today. Decent films both of them..Friends season 2 is about to finish (on my DVD)..with Feebies "smelly cat"...had a hearty laugh there!
Kary called up and informed me abt Reliance India call website being hacked..the phone has been ringing since then. Tomorrow will be spent working on assignments and some thesis stuff to do. 100 days to India trip!

The ball is rolling

Its the end of first week of classes at VT. Hmm..enough excitement has been built up and the initial inertia is gone. Party season is back in town; we had a CS department freshers party, this time its a huge Indian student population all worried abt survival without funding, but hopefuly situation will ease out in the coming months. Then we had the ISA Freshers party today; all rocking Indians dancing to the tunes of Himesh Reshmaiyya's muzic. Relished food at India Garden. Coinicidentally, today is the start of Ganesh festival here at VT. Similar to last year, we have a enthu public with ex-students driving from DC to be a part of pooja. The next ten days are gonna be enjoyable with aarti every evening and some "prasad"; wow i miss the modak; i wish i cud be home just for some time to eat modaks dipped in shuddh desi ghee; my mouth waters, cant describe it any more.
Days will soon start rolling as semester progresses and there is lots of work to be done..

What a day!

It was supposed to be the first day at Fall semester classes for 26000 VT students here in Blacksburg. But the day marked history. A suspect fled from police custody, was armed and dangerous. He was believed to be hiding near VT campus. It began with an email in the morning advising employees at CRC to stay away from work; the spot where he was spotted. Rumor then spread to campus and our student center was evacuated. Armed police officers were all around campus searching for him. It didnt look different than a war situation; with SWAT forces, sharp shooters on top of univ buildings. The entire university was evacuated and classes cancelled for the day due to the tense and potentially hostile nature. As the day progressed, i sat at home glued to latest television updates. Soon the news was on national media including CNN ; this was indeed big for a small and otherwise safe town. At around 4pm, the guy was arrested in the bushes near the Rugby stadium of VT. That eased out a lot of pressure and classes will begin from tomorrow.

Not a very good thing to happen at the start of the semester; except that we got an extra holiday; but who wants it anyways now after enjoying 3 months to the fullest!