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Presentation skills are much like ETL process.

One of the regular routines of any IT delivery team is to have meetings and presentations. There are meetings to discuss about projects, plans, blockers and almost all aspects of delivery life cycle. In fact we seem to be so fond of having meetings that sometimes we arrange meeting to decide what future meetings we should arrange. But do these meetings really serve any purpose?

The answer to the question cannot be categorised as either ‘Yes’ or ‘No’. Some meetings or some parts of the meetings turn out to be really fruitful in deciding the future course of actions with identified action owners and due dates whereas sometimes or some parts of meetings just prove to be a lengthy rhapsody of good sounding but practically meaningless technical jargons. Haven’t you ever come across a meeting wherein the presenter just seemed to be blabbering about some weird stuff and you were thinking about your upcoming vacation plans while you pretended to smile and look interested? You even make an effort to pick on some real fancy jargon and make a note of it to pose a question during the Q&A section of the meeting, just to provide a re-assuring affirmation to all that you were listening. If this has ever happened to you, then there is no need to feel bad about yourself. There is no problem with your attentiveness; rather the fault lies with the focus area and presentation skill of the presenter. 

It is often taken as a joke when people say ‘Oh, making PowerPoint presentation is a real skill’, but to be honest, it really is. Not only in terms of making the presentation presentable, but it is also a skill when it comes to the core content and how the information is transferred from one mind to a set of minds. An idea in itself could be real genius, but it would serve no purpose at all unless it is shared across easily and simplistically with those who are supposed to be working on materialising that idea. 

Look at the Google homepage interface, how simple, easy to use and intuitive it is, and then just think about what goes in the background when you make a simple search. Even the most complex of things could be presented in a way that it is grasped by a good majority, if not all. Our meetings, technical meetings specially, are not the platforms for us to showcase our linguistic skills and boast about our own knowledge set. That fact has been established by the very fact that we have been bestowed with the responsibility of putting up a presentation together for that subject matter. The very basic underlying requirement of any technical meeting is to spread and share information with all relevant parties. Think of it as a simple ETL job. Extract, Transform and Load, 3 simple steps and an interface has been created between 2 non-communicating systems. 

When you are working on the first part i.e. Extract, you can put your idea on paper in any manner you like or feel comfortable with. You can bullet your points; you can draw diagrams or simply make sketches. You are free to follow your own instincts at this stage as it is your information just for you. No other party has yet been involved.

The next part i.e. Transform is the key. Once you have gathered every piece of information in your most comfortable format, you have a universal set which you want to convey. Now all you need to do is to translate/transform that information in a way so that it makes sense for all or most of your target audience. So that binary tree you drew looks so fun and simple to you, but guess what, it means just gibberish drawing to someone you might be presenting it to. It doesn’t always come down to representing your thoughts in tangible ways. Sometimes you might find yourself restricted due to certain constraints you just can’t overcome. But even in such situations, a basic thought should be given to the process of making things as simple as they can possibly get. Basically avoid using α-D-glucopyranosyl-(1→2)-β-D-fructofuranoside where the word ‘Sugar’ could be used, or if it is absolutely necessary to use the difficult technical language then at least make an effort to provide less complex understandable substitutes as well.

The next step i.e. Load primarily stresses on your creative abilities. So once you have your information documented and transformed, it is time for you to make it as presentable and easy to look at. It is a combination of what you write on your slides and what notes you prepare to talk about that slide. I can draw an elephant on a slide and either say ‘It is an elephant’ or can provide the reasoning behind putting that elephant on that slide. The intention should be to load the information in the minds of your target audience.

It might look uncanny, but good presentation relates quite well to the concept of the ETL. If you are willing to give it a try to the basics of preparing a pack for your meetings, you might end up seeing some observable positive results in terms of your audience attention and retention.

Are We using the right Appraisal Systems??

 

Appraisal season is just around the corner. All job holders, especially the ones in IT industry, wait with bated breath for their ratings to be announced, depending on which presumably their salary revisions, bonuses and promotions will be decided, well, at least that is the established norm. What I believe to be the real causal effect of the ratings though, is a few bitching sessions with peers, a few short lived revolts and at the max the invention of a few new technical matrices for the next year’s modified appraisal system.

With so much competition and clients turning highly demanding, the only profit making avenue that seem to be working for the big IT giants is the ‘Over Commitment’ i.e. sell beyond your producing capacity. What it often results in is the over burdening and setting exceedingly high expectations for their employees. This huge pressure of delivery and the myriad of trackers and matrices to be maintained throughout the year, leaves employees with virtually no (or reduced) personal time and space.

What makes things worse is the fact that instead of simplifying things, the planners and innovators keep coming up with more complex formula and calculation matrices each year. All this is done in guise of technological simplification of course, but it eventually turns out to be a nightmarish feat for the poor, innocent employees who just look forward to their efforts getting deserved recognition. With the appraisal systems having number of input parameters possibly greater than Large Hadron Collider, it becomes impossible to keep track of one’s own performance highlights. There is an individual scale based score for everything ranging from number of billable hours to number of hours spent on bench, number of white papers published to number of patents filed, number of successful deliveries managed to number of dollars earned for the company. Then there is weighted score for all such individual components. There is cross functional and cross technological score and then there is career enhancement and learning score. And as if all of this wasn’t enough, there happens to be factors such as behavioural skills, personal skills, soft skills and N number of other less relevant (or irrelevant) skills too. The capturing of these parameters itself is a tiring and time consuming task, but the real nightmare is experienced when you are expected to score big on all these factors and are supposed to keep doing so throughout the elapsed year and justify that at the end.

It takes some refresher courses and trainings to understand these complex systems first. Then it takes an enormous effort to effectively comply with the requirements. Quite often this becomes an additional burden for employees to cope up with these systems given the amount of load they already deal with in their day to day lives.

What it results in is the unfair distribution of perks based on the skills that might not be relevant at all in the first place, yes, a person skilled enough to portray his/her image positively through these complex appraisal systems eventually turns out to be the winner, irrespective of the quality of work he/she had done, whereas a person prioritising his/her day to day work over these futile, non-productive exercises loses.

What comes as an outcome is a deep sense of remorse, lack of motivation and feeling of detachment. When the appraisal systems are supposed to be working in favour of the hard working and committed employees, it often turns out to be just the opposite. The question that the big IT giants need to ask themselves is that ‘Is it really worth it?’

What I didn't like about Dangal??

 

It wasn’t very long ago when our nation or at least a section of our society was seemingly infuriated by some comments on intolerance made by Mr. Aamir Khan, the Bollywood superstar. Posts doing the rounds on social media appealed to one and all to boycott any upcoming movies starring Mr. Khan and people were even predicting his yet to be released movie ‘Dangal’ would face the wrath of angry population. Well, contrary to all those predictions ‘Dangal’ not only managed to do well, it also turned out to be the highest grosser in the history of Indian cinema.

What went wrong?

Why an intolerant nation, influenced by full blow of fascism suddenly turned so accepting, kind hearted and communal?

Well, I don’t have answers to such questions, but what I observed and what I am about to reveal is way more contradicting than the argument posed above.

In the realm of cinematic art form, Dangal might be considered as a masterpiece, but looking at it as a film promoting the social cause of women empowerment would certainly be delusional. The film depicts the journey of a high headed man looking forward to get his unrealized dream of getting a Gold medal for the country in wrestling fulfilled through his offspring. This single point agenda of his life makes his craving to have a boy child stronger. Unfortunately enough, his wife keeps on giving births to girls one after the other, distressing the man with each birth.

The one paragraph above alone describes the immense hypocrisy that this film carries throughout, unless we, as a society, really find it Ok to burden our innocent kids with the baggage of our own unfulfilled goals and desires, let alone the explicitly depicted craving to have a boy child.

Later on after his daughters bash up some local boys, the man realises that his daughters could have the potential of becoming professional wrestlers if they are properly trained. A slight silver lining in the cloud propels the man’s enthusiasm to start his endeavours towards realising his dream, which he at one point had given up, however his enthusiasm would result in depriving his daughters of their deserved childhood pampering has been portrayed as some futile thought which no one should give a damn about because the next few minutes of the screenplay render some harsh and brutal impositions on children in the funniest of ways.

Again, as a cinema, all this should be fine because it is funny and entertaining but is this something we would want our kids to go through?

Now, the girls resist to their core to avoid the strict exercise schedule, but the cunning man plans all their trivial attempts to fail. The transition shows the man to go from a man wanting to have a boy child to a man fighting the society to advocate girls’ rights, Noble right? But why doesn’t the man transitions from being a goal driven apathetic father to someone more concerned and empathetic?

The reluctant girls were nearly on the verge of turning rebellious when the moment of epiphany strikes them at their friend’s wedding where they realise that in the region they reside it is almost customary for parents to get their daughters married at a tender age, and if amidst such social conditions these girls are getting an opportunity to do something then they must not complain, rather they must consider themselves fortunate enough and start worshipping the one person they considered their archenemy. Noble?

The scene cuts and the seed of sincerity seem to have planted in the girls for they now start sharing the same dream with their father.

Among other contradictions, the movie also kind of promotes the idea that wrestlers can’t do without meat. It isn’t Ok for the girls to have occasional ‘Pani Puri’ but the chicken must be cooked in fried onions full of oil because it gives the required proteins for God’s sake.

The other half of the movie is also full of controversial cinematic liberties that the makers took such as showing the National Coach in a very poor taste. Mixing up a bit of ‘Chak De’ flavour to show the strategy making session of the father, who for some reason knows better than National Coach and his gut instincts works for the best 100% of the time.

I enjoyed the movie a lot, and found it entertaining and my intension behind this post is not to discourage anyone who hasn’t seen the movie yet, I am only writing as to highlight the hypocritical contradictions shown in the movie which I would best regard as a work of fiction rather as something to draw any inspiration from.

 

What I didn't like about Dear Zindagi

It started with Queen, the story of a new age girl who goes on a journey of self-discovery and eventually realizes that there is more to life than what she had always thought of. Then it was followed by a number of other films concentrated on central female character and her abilities as an individual. Probably for the first time Indian Cinema is being brave enough to pick up the subject of Women Liberalization and Individuality. It is a good sign. But in an attempt to cash in on this popular thought wave, the latest addition to the series of films doesn’t seem to be striking that deep a chord. Yes, I am mentioning about Dear Zindagi. The movie has been praised and appreciated by one and all. Its motivational dialogues are doing meme rounds all over the social media and people are feeling a happy and positive sentiment about the film. All of this is fine, I don’t have any problem what so ever with the kind of attention the film is getting. My concern is a bit different and a bit counter intuitively sensitive.

It happens quite often that explicit glorification of an aspect results in implicit marginalization of another aspect. This new found and overtly celebrated women singularity is somehow coming across as discriminatory against men. I know it’s a difficult proposition. Even in today’s world, it is called and observed as a men’s world and only a minority population of women enjoy the real freedom. Those ways men shouldn’t be at the complaining end. Well, I am not complaining. I am just iterating the observation I have made which I believe is not healthy and should be taken care of more seriously.    

The film revolves around a confused young girl whose past haunts her in such a way that she fears commitment and therefore becomes indecisive about her choice in love. It is understandable. We all go through that kind of phase in our lives, although not necessary all our pasts are scarred. People could be confused and aimless despite there being no past incident influencing their sub conscious. But I guess it becomes essential in films to relate any eccentric behaviour of the protagonist with their past to make the story telling a bit less complex and less time consuming, Alia’s character in Highway, Ranbeer’s character in Tamasha are a few evidences of what I am trying to say here. 

So, sliding through the haunting past cliché, the story moves on to another cliché i.e. the introduction of a messiah figure, a psychiatrist played by Shahrukh. Again, the logic behind this cliché could be that story telling becomes simpler and in case of this film, it made the way for a superstar to pitch in, opening up marketing and revenue generation avenues for the otherwise low key film. Queen had scored big on this front as Kangna’s character managed to overcome her pseudo limitations by herself without the intervention of any guiding force.

Now let’s take a look at the so called life altering philosophies rendered as simple dialogues by Shahrukh’s character in the film.

“Albert Einstein Ne kaha tha: Pagal wo hota hai jo roz roz same kaam karta hai aur chahta hai ki nateeja alag ho”

Can’t be credited to the film if it was indeed said by Albert Einstein.

“Rona, Gussa, Nafrat
Kuch bhi khulkar express nahi karne diya
Ab pyaar kaise express karein?”

Sounded good and convincing when delivered by Shahrukh, however I could see glimpses of inspiration picked from movies like Taare Zameen Par.

“Don’t let the past blackmail your present to ruin a beautiful future”

Heard number of times before, however the idea portrayed is quite apt and relevant, but isn’t this something everyone already knows?

“Hum hamesha mushkil rasta kyu chunte hain zaruri kaam ke liye, kya pata asan raste se bhi kaam ho jaye?”

You see films like Lakshya and this philosophy is represented as just the opposite i.e. ‘Kab tak asan rasta chunte rahoge, kabhi to mushkilo ka samna karo’.

Moreover, the choice always doesn’t boils down to us, more often it’s the circumstances which puts us in making the choice. Barring people with affluent backgrounds, the majority of middle class makes choices out of compulsion. I personally believe in the philosophy of having the smart and simple way out, but the philosophy itself is quite debatable. It certainly is not a blanket solution for everyone.

“We are all our teachers in the school of life”

Yes, true, and so is our society, our surroundings and a number of other factors. Again, this is something everyone knows already and not worthy of being preached.

“Agar hum apni zindagi ka steering wheel apne haath me nahi lenge na, to koi dusra driver seat par baith jayega”

I couldn’t be sure of what does this even mean. Does this mean that we must take control of our lives as to make our own decisions, carve our own careers, and live our own lives? If that is the case then Shahrukh’s character should have refused to take control of Alia’s character’s life when she was in desperate need of help. Someone might argue that Shahrukh’s character did what he did only to help Alia’s character come to the realization of his grand philosophies and he was not actually sitting in driver’s seat, but during that duration of her treatment, Alia’s character actually behaved as Shahrukh’s character asked her to and the process might have left a lifelong impact on Alia’s character as to change her behavior forever. If this doesn’t accounts for letting someone else drive your life then what does?

“Safe feel karne ke liye pehle saare darr mitana zaruri hai”

It is quite contextual. To get rid of fear might not be the best idea always. It is the inherent fear which drives survival in most of the animal species and having evolved from our primitive selves, even humans cannot be devoid of fear because it is necessary for our survival.

“Jab hum apne aap ko achhi tarah samajh lete hain, to dusre kya samajhte hain, it doesn’t matter, not at all”

It might be true for enlightened souls like Gautam Buddha, but a practical and social human being cannot live in isolation. It actually matters what others think about us. People take efforts to enhance their image in front of others, especially those who matter, like our bosses who might appraise us based on what they think about us, like the father of the girl/ boy we love who might decide whether to allow the relation based on what they think about us and like a number of other people.

“Zindagi me jab koi pattern banta ya koi aadat banti dikhai de na, to uske baare me achhi tarah se sochna chahiye, genius is about knowing when to stop”

Even if the habit under consideration is for good? At one hand the person is preaching ‘Take the easy route’ and at other hand contradicting it by preaching that don’t get addicted to patterns. For Alia’s character it was easy route to always remain in touch with Shahrukh’s character and seek guidance whenever required, but it was told to her that this pattern needs to be broken down now, implying that whether you like it or not, now you have to take the difficult route of dealing with your situations on your own. This looked fancy and inspirational in the aura of the theatre, but actually this doesn’t make any sense. 

And now we finally come to the phrase which I found most disturbing and uncalled for:

“Jab kursi khareedne me itna choice hai to fir Jeevan saathi me kyun nahi”…..or something of this sort where an analogy was drawn between chairs and potential partners. Now in a film which claims to be the thoughtful and sensible cinema and has been perceived likely by most of the audience, an analogy of this sort doesn’t fits. More than being disgusting, it is inappropriate. You see, chairs are objects, and comparing those with guys is a way of objectifying the guys. Now if a similar analogy had been drawn comparing women to some object, it would have been thrashed and put down by almost everyone, but a derogatory objectification of men doesn’t rings any alarm, doesn’t raises any eyebrows. A person can buy and use as many chairs as she wants simultaneously without violating any moral obligations, but having multiple partners simultaneously is counted as infidelity. Now infidelity might not be a crime per se, but is it something we should inculcate in our uber cool life styles?

Moreover a chair could be bought for a friend, relative, neighbor and anyone else, but same could not be the case with guys. Yeah, I know, I am taking the analogy way too seriously and literally. The context in which it was used was probably not the same, but my point is that if there is a movie which is based on life altering philosophies and is worthy of people’s attention and appreciation then shouldn’t the creators be wary enough to handle each and every aspect, including the subtle analogies, in a more sensitive manner?

The idea was simple and noble, but somehow I could not relate to the execution. I can appreciate the intent behind the movie but not the sloppy dialogues which are spreading across as some commandments on the social media. I am a person of simple needs, for me, films like Anand and Bawarchi still outweighs Dear Zindagi.

A peep in future - Baar Baar Dekho

The concept that the film ‘Baar Baar Dekho’ (BBD) tries to put forth is quite simple and easy to understand but immensely difficult to implement. Those who have seen the British romantic comedy-drama ‘About Time’ would agree that BBD’s core is loosely inspired from the British film. Both films preach the central idea of noticing the minor details of life and celebrate those as they happen rather to keep wishing for ways to turn into some magnanimous life altering events.

The areas where BBD fails to strike a chord though are quite a many, and the main area I found as faulty was the way the protagonist comes to the realisation. Jay magically skips into future (could be an elaborated dream sequence, never explained in the movie whether he was dreaming, the Pandit was playing some sorcery or was it anything else) and gets to live a few snapshots of his future life (one day each), where he finds out that all the things didn’t go as he had planned. In his conquest to revert back to a more desirable future, he even tries to fix a few things in his life when he gets a chance to live a day in past after having witnessed his divorce in future. But despite his calculated measures, things seem to have fallen apart when he learns that eventually he would end up divorced, not loved, alone in his old age. This was the time when the hard realisation hits Jay. Having stated the reason for loving Dia as ‘because we are married’, ‘because we have a child together’ and ‘because we have 2 kids’ on different occasions, when Jay returns to a day in past, post his old age traumatic scene, was the first time he states the reason for loving Dia as ‘because you were my past, you are going to be my future and you are this very moment of mine’, beautiful, isn’t it?

The thing that disturbed me though was the fact that Jay could have taken the decision to profess his love for Dia as another calculated and precautionary measure to avoid his own miserable future situation rather than actually feeling the love. Moreover, whatever reaction came out of Jay was entirely based on those 4 or 5 days he lived in future. There could have been better days of his future which he did not witness, thus his character transition could also be a result of an unbalanced and biased foisting of traumatic experiences. For example, what Jay would have done if he had got a chance to live a day where he was being awarded some dignified award for his contribution to Maths? Or like Dia had found love in another man of her own related field of interest, maybe Jay was also with another woman Mathematician and was actually happy in his life, but all he got to see was that one small day where he was pathetic and sad, giving him an illusion of having made some big mistake.

And the final reason I found the core treatment somewhat unappealing was the fact that the film actually contradicts its own philosophy in a way. It clearly says focus on each day and each moment as it comes, because no one knows what lies in future, over calculated planning is futile. And yet Jay is characterised as being some kind of dick for living his own life as it came through. He emerged as a winner and hero only when he dictates his present actions (confess his love for Dia) to better shape (over plan) his future, for he gets a chance to peep into the future.

News or Views??

Just the other day I was browsing through random videos on Facebook when a particular clip caught my attention. It was a clip of a debate show on an Indian news channel. The panellists included a number of prominent personalities from various political backgrounds and inclinations, a few progressive feminists, social figures and news anchor who played the role of a so called moderator. The topic of debate was unclear as it was just an extract from the whole show, but it revolved around condition of women in India. Now, since it was a debate thus each one supposedly had their own right to take a stand and defend it, but quite often when topics like this i.e. topics with clear and morally intuitive demarcation of black and white are discussed, it becomes extremely risky for anyone to take stand for black and defend it. The clip wasn’t any exception either. There was 1 guy who wanted to put forth his views that he believed that women themselves were responsible for the condition of women in India, and he was literally shut up. The guy was embarrassed and harassed in the news studio and was even asked to offer an unconditional apology for putting forward his demonic views. That is when I realized the magnitude of deterioration Indian media has gone through over past few years. More than shocking, it is alarming and concerning. 

What used to be news channels a few years ago have now become views channels. 

With the inadvertent segregation of our natives into political regimes and sub regimes, even the news channels could easily be identified as belonging to one school of thought or the other. With the onset of a single point agenda for existence of such channels i.e. profit making, the quality had already gone for a toss years ago, but what is happening now is a completely different new low. 

Media houses are no longer for the purpose of spreading awareness and bringing out the events as they happen, media houses these days are spreading their own biased, unbalanced views and passing verdicts even before any case could ever see the light of law. This is not enlightenment; this is a dangerous situation to be in. 

People do not seek to look for any credibility certification before blindly believing anything they see on these news channels. Biased opinions are getting spread across large populations like a wild fire and even otherwise neutral people are finding it fashionable to stick a political standpoint. Probably at offices, tea shops, barber shops etc, it feels cool to be outspoken and propagate ones political views in a hard tone, and if those views are backed up by a so called authentic news piece then person in question feels the pseudo intellect. It reminds me of an episode of Friends where Joey mugs up an entire ‘V’ encyclopaedia to be able to contribute in the coffee house chit chat with his friends. 

Corporate media houses are becoming bigger by the day. Names that just used to be the known journalists a few years ago are getting a celebrity status now with their Facebook fan pages and Twitter accounts attracting hundreds of thousands of followers. A few of them are audacious enough to insult anyone on public forums who crosses their way. News has become a big joke and there seem to be absolutely no freaking control over what or what not a news channel could telecast on their show. Army strategies against a terrorist attack are being telecast live in loops, giving crucial edge to terrorists watching the shows live. Unproven allegations are being put on people and they are being judged as criminals of some sort. Achievers and successful people are being ridiculed for any nonsensical reason what-so-ever. Jokes on celebrities from entertainment and sports background are found to be offensive but jokes on state’s Chief Minister and nation’s Prime Minister are found to be laughable and in good jolly spirit. All of this and much more is happening in the name of free speech. 

Freedom of speech – our constitution entitles us to it, no one can take that away from us, but the question to ponder upon here is………………Is freedom of speech a toy of rich and famous media houses?