Meeting Micorsoft’s COO, Kevin Turner
When I got a call from Microsoft to inform me about their global COO’s visit to India, it all sounded familiar. Last year, I got a call informing me of their CEO, Steve Ballmer’s visit. It was for an event called IndiMix and they had wanted to shoot a video of me pitching for the event . The video never got published. They invited me for the event but when I got to know I’d be part of at least 5000 other people, I let it pass. You achieve nothing in such big crowds. As you can guess, I had good reason to brush off the recent call.
But I was wrong. The call came from D’Souza, a passionate web evangelist at Microsoft. Evangelists are good people, way better than sales folks. I have known D’souza earlier when he had invited me to speak at a few Microsoft events. He wanted to meet up with me in person.
When we met up, he handed out a personally written invitation (in calligraphy) signed by the General Manger of Microsoft India, inviting me for a round table discussion with Kevin Turner at Mumbai. And I quote a line from the invitation…”We are trying to bring together the key web influencers in the country to enrich our understanding of the space – thereby adding value to the offerings that we bring to the market in the future”.
As if I wasn’t impressed enough, he said it was a round table discussion with ten other invited folks. Good. So, it is NOT going to be 5000 folks. Just 10 of us with Kevin. Makes for a better chance for a meaningful conversation and hopefully I get to add value to the discussion.
I’m looking forward to meeting up with Kevin Turner and I won’t hide the awe. The awe is understandable when you get to read his profile. As the COO, he is responsible for all sales & marketing initiatives. He heads deptartments that has 35,000 employees (that’s half of MS’ 70,000 employees) and responsible for generating revenues of $44 Billion.
And he is just 40. His photograph lies about his age. Damn! He is just 7 years older than me. Sigh!
In addition to Kevin, I’m looking forward to connecting up with the other invited members. I heard a few names and I was impressed. I should get to know the entire list by today.
Should be fun.
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The NIT Trichy Visit – An Overview
I was at NIT Trichy to talk on ‘The Business Side of Blogging’ to the MBA students. Here’s a quick recount of the trip and the talk.
I’ve heard a lot about NIT Trichy (previously REC Trichy) over many years but got to visit for the first time. The hospitality of the students was fantastic. They had taken full care of my transportation and accommodation. Satadal Payeng was at the railway station at the wee hours of the morning to pick me up. Satadal, btw, has a nice 2 wheeler blog and within a month, has started earning $100 a month.
We made the 20 kms journey to the campus where I was put up at their guest house.
There were about a 100 students in the seminar hall. Considering it was a four day holiday weekend, I was surprised so many chose to stay back in the campus.
The MBA dept has been in existence for 29 years and is only the second engineering college in Tamil Nadu, after Anna University, to start a management course. It’s reputation can be gauged by the fact that every single student has got jobs in campus placement.
I was quite impressed with the course fee. It’s Rs.1.2 lakhs fees includes the full two years course fee, hostel and even mess bill. All inclusive. Compare that with Rs.5 lakhs that a few MBA colleges charge for a year.
BIZZDOM is their first intra-departmental fest and it looks like its going to turn into an annual event.
After the customary talk by the Director, HoD, the lighting of the lamp and a premature coffee break, my two hour talk began. As expected, the students were a bit rusty but soon opened up. My usual empty promise of cadburys for the first few questions never fails to work!
I was particularly impressed with a bunch of no-nonsense questions that the students asked. I liked their attitude to challenge the basics. There were some very good questions that were raised and that helped in making the session a lot interactive.
See that big audio speakers in the picture above? Those are some of the best I’ve seen. Very good audio clarity. The mic had a small problem and I used the opportunity to chuck it and mingle with the crowd. I’ve learnt the trick that if you want the crowd to participate in the discussion, its important to have a level playing field. I guess, that helped. Not so for my throat though. Two hours of speaking aloud kinda drained me out but the session was fun.
The students have done a good job in organizing the event but coming from a bunch of soon-to-be MBA graduates and that too from a premier institute like NIT, I had expected more. The event started half-hour late and when you land there early, the wait seems much longer. Punctuality is a direct indicator of professionalism.
The biggest irritant was when my speech was interrupted by the organizers to read out the bio of the second guest speaker who had just walked in. And it couldn’t have happened at a worse time. I was mid way narrating a passionate story to illustrate a point and the interruption punctured the poignancy of the moment. I’m sure the organizers didn’t mean harm but these are subtleties you would expect them to know.
The second session was on ‘Seven Habits of Highly Effective People’, yes, based on the bestselling book by Steven Covey. Mr.Srikant, a professional trainer and a seven habits evangelist was the speaker. I have always wanted to read this book ever since it started topping the New York Times bestseller list many years ago but never got to finish it. ( in spite of it sitting on my book shelf). Srikanth spiced up his talks with examples from his own life and how it influenced him. He gave a nice overview and it motivated me to start reading the book again, hopefully finish it this time and apply the learning in life.
It reminded me of the Business Book Readers Meet that we used to have. We were four friends and each one of us would choose a business book to read. Once a month, we would meet at the Loyola college grounds to give a brief synopsis and key learning from the book. This way, it gave a satisfaction of having kinda read four books and actually gives you the motivation to finish reading some of those book. Gotto restart that nice business book meets.
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Speaking at NIT Trichy
The students of Dept of Management Studies at National Institute of Technology, Trichy (NITT) are organizing an inter-departmental management meet called BIZZDOM’07. An event that aims to inculcate management thinking amongst enthusiastic engineers. Nice to see an initiative that gets the MBAs and engineers together.
The meet is scheduled for the 6th and 7th of April with the management games scheduled on the first day followed by the guest lectures on day 2. The organizers have invited me to talk to the students about how being passionate about an area of interest can actually turn into a paying business proposition. They’re particularly interested in the business side of blogging and podcasting.
There’s definitely something about me and NITs off late. This is the second NIT I’m speaking at in as many months. Last month was NIT Calicut. Trichy should be fun.
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Learning By Doing
I totally believe in the principle of learning by doing. Getting one’s hands dirty is the best way to get started. Realized that when me and a bunch of friends had an informal Tinker Meet on Video blogging, where everyone tried making a video. Not only was it educational, it was also fun.
So, when Sidharth Rao, CEO of WebChutney and Rajesh Barnwal, Editor of AlooTechie approached me with an idea to conduct a workshop on Podcasting, I was quite interested. The event takes place on 25th of this month at Delhi.
IAMAI (Internet & Mobile Association of India) has come forward to support the event and MakeMyTrip is helping foot my flight expenses.
Teaching has been a passion for me and if its a workshop, it gets even better.
If you are in Delhi and want to learn a thing or two about Podcasting, this session might be useful to you. I’m looking forward to sharing the experiences from producing ‘The Kiruba Show‘ and the lessons I have learned from other podcasting professionals.
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Speaking at NIT, Calicut
I’ve always enjoyed speaking at colleges more than at corporate events because of sheer energy and enthusiasm. It’s fun and I always have a ball. When the students at National Institute of Technology, Calicut, invited me to speak at their annual FOSS event, I gladly accepted. Besides, other than Munnar, I’ve never been elsewhere in Kerala. So, it was an opportunity to tick another place on my map.
Now, what is a blogging session doing at a hardcore FOSS event? Well, it beats me too until I got it clarified with the organizers. It turned out that most of the tech guys were interested in blogging and even though it wasn’t a perfect fit, they wanted to fit it in.
Well, this is the hall where my talk was scheduled to be held. It was the last talk of the day. And it was scheduled at 9:30 PM. Yup, at night. Right after Dinner. The right recipe for a super low turnout. I mean, who would turn up after a heavy meal for another talk??
Well, a LOT of people. I couldn’t have been so wrong. The hall was nearly packed full, the highest turnout any event got. Boy, was I surprised. I later learnt that that late night sessions have the highest turnout and there was a reason why they slotted my talk there.
The participants were super. Highly interactive and a great sport. There’s something that a hall full of eager youngsters gets you going. I had a ball. I didn’t realize how quickly my one and half hour talk went. My talk easily would figure in my personal all time top 10 list.
The entrance of NITC.
A shadowy entrance to the campus.
That’s the view out of our guest room balcony. We opened the door and stared straight into the woods. Awesome. That’s Atul Chitnis with whom I shared the room at the guest house.
I’ve heard a lot about Mamachan’s, a tiny hotel just outside the compound wall of the campus. This budget friendly joint which allows students to have ‘accounts’, is famous for its Chilly Beef. and it didn’t disappoint. At all!
As you can see, we polished off many plates. and many glasses of ‘sharjah’, a special iced concoction of banana, milk and boost!
It was two days of packed sessions from morning till night. And simultaneously in three different halls. Honestly, it was way too hardcore and I easily got bored on second day. Many of the sessions were sparsely attended. And I saw many doze away. Can’t blame the kids. It got too heavy, especially the post lunch sessions.
Saw this old board discarded inside the woods of the campus. NIT earlier used to be called REC.
The Calicut Airport reaches out to meet you. Literally. The airport seems to be built on a hill top. As the plane descends to land, the runway surprises you by coming in much earlier. And oh, you also need to walk on the tarmac from the aeroplane to the airport. No transit buses. In the picture is Shreyas, who travelled from Bangalore with me, along with Tejas and Atul.
On the second night, the organizers had arranged for an informal midnight session. As expected, it was technology that dominated but it was fun as everyone loosened up. The topics ranged from unconference, girls, drugs and more technology. And yeah toilets. The NITians were proud in having the cleanest and best hostel toilets in India. You should have seen them beam with pride! 
I’d give a big thumbs up to the spirit and the enthusiasm of the students. The organizers, all students, showed phenomenal passion and zeal. The hospitality was near perfect. There was always someone to take care of our needs.
NITC has one of the best facilities that I have seen around. True, the net connectivity wasn’t great but how many colleges can boast of free WiFi for the entire hostels. And yeah, the best toilets!!
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Email:Kiruba @ Kiruba.com
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