We didn’t pre-book any of the hotel rooms and decided to pick a hotel after we landed at the places. While checking online with very scant connectivity, one particular place caught my eye. In fact, it was one particular type of accommodation that caught my eye…a Tree House. I immediately knew this was it.

I called up the owner, Mr.Gregory Bosen, and inquired about the availability of the Tree House. When he heard that I was bringing along two kids, he was quick to advise me against the tree house as it is perched on a tree 80 feet off the ground. That nailed it! I knew this is the place for us!

We landed up at Glenrock estates, spread over 100 acres of coffee, cardamom and pepper plantations. Mr.Greg relented seeing my perseverance and let us use the tree house.

We had to walk a good 10 minutes downhill into the foresty plantation before we came across this magnificent tree. The first thing that it reminded me of was the Eva tree in Avatar movie. It was massive and earned my complete respect. The tree would easily be over 100 years old.

While I was hoping for a rope ladder or even pegs hit against the trunk, it was a slight let down to see proper steps made out of iron rods that lead to the tree house. A little less adventurous but convenient for my wife and kids.

It was at dusk that we began to realize how lonely and secluded the place was. While there is basis light and water available at the tree house, it can get eerily lonely at night. My kids began to freak out by the sounds of the forest.

I later found out a wonderful wood house on a hill top with a brilliant view in the estate. But more importantly it was closer to the owner’s house and the kids felt a lot more comfortable. We shifted over but we will never forget the one hour that we spent on top of the tree house.

This is one of my favorite photos from the ‘Tour of Tamilnadu’, the 7 days, 900 kms cycling trip. The tour was split into 7 stages and the toughest one was on Day 3. We had to cycle 188 kms from Rameswaram to Tuticorin and had to do it within 12 hours. Not only was it the longest distance of the tour, it was also the harshest. The sun was beating down hard and the heat amplified by salt pans that spread across thousands of acres. As if that wasn’t enough, the route was through a boring stretch of National Highways. Our legs were weary from having pedaled 94 and 127 kms the previous two days.

It was tough day. Both physically and mentally taxing. They say that the race is divided into two parts. The first part is 150 kms and the second part is 38 kms. It may not make mathematical sense but they are right. The last stretch is the hardest. Each kilometer starts getting longer. The pain in the legs grows with each push of the pedal. The sun saps your energy no matter how much Enerzol you drink.

That’s when I teamed up with Ramesh, fellow rider and NLP trainer. We stuck together and gave each other company. We chatted strange subjects to fight boredom. We also had to fight the sweeper van which threathed to pick us up off the road in case we didn’t finish before dusk. That’s an ignominy we didn’t want to face. Now, in addition to fatigue and pain, we also had to fight the clock.

We finally reached the destination, GRT Regency Hotel at Tuticorin, exactly at 6:01 PM. The first thing I did after parking my cycle was reach out to Ramesh for a bear hug. That hug showed the power of human mind to overcome physical hurdles. It showed the power of team work.

Kudos to KrishnaKumar, fellow rider and a photo enthusiast for seizing the exact moment. To me, this photo will be special. Very special.

So, I’m dedicating the next two days to jot down my New Year Resolutions list. Previous experiences and wisdom from aging has taught me not to be too strict with it. Its a friendly guideline and not a must-do list.

As with previous years, my resolutions will be kept private. But if you follow my progress, it’d be easy for you to make it out.

IIT Madras Hosts BrainJam on Entrepreneurship

C-TIDES, the Entrepreneurship cell of IIT Madras, is hosting an engaging UnConference on “IDEA: A Beginning of Entrepreneur’s Journey” by Mr. Kiruba Shankar, a serial entrepreneur, a columnist and an author. Being from an engineering background, Mr. Kiruba has initiated several entrepreneurial ventures like Business Blogging, F5ive Technologies, Vaksana Farms, Verdure Books along with authoring books like Wikipedia: A beginner’s guide, Copy Right & Left and Crowdsourcing Tweet.

This highly acclaimed UnConference would primarily involve adrenaline filled, highly energetic brain jamming session where the audience are encouraged to openly share their entrepreneurial ideas/thoughts in less than a minute. Along with this thrilling extempore, the speaker would also spice up the session by sharing his entrepreneurial success story. He would also be drawing upon excerpts from the lives of the leading entrepreneurs and business leaders. Kiruba will touch upon how they came across their eureka moment of entrepreneurial idea, what mistakes they made, what to learn from them and how they scaled up their business.

The UnConference will  be held on the 29th of  October 2011 from  6.30pm to 8.30pm. at Central Lecture Theatre, IIT Madras. This is a free, open-invite event and interested person can register by sending an email to activities@c-tides.org

For more information, please contact:
Sunny Purswani
Student Head
C-TIDES, IIT Madras
+91-9940574165
sunny.purswani89@gmail.com

I’m really excited at hosting Dries on Kiruba.TV.  The interview will take place on Thursday, 27th October. He will be joining an illustrious list of achievers that include Jimmy Wales, Sir Martin Sorrell, Anand Mahindra and Guy Kawasaki.

Dries Buytaert is the original creator and project lead for the Drupal open source web publishing and collaboration platform. Buytaert serves as president of the Drupal Association, a non-profit organization formed to help Drupal flourish.

He is also co-founder and CTO of Acquia, a venture-backed software company that offers products and services for Drupal. Dries is also a co-founder of Mollom, a web service that helps you identify content quality and, more importantly, helps you stop website spam.

A native of Belgium, Buytaert holds a PhD in computer science and engineering from Ghent University and a Licentiate Computer Science (MsC) from the University of Antwerp.

BusinessWeek selected Dries as the Young Entrepreneurs of Tech and MIT Tech Review picked him amongst the top 35 Young Innovators.

It’s rather simple. A project that lets me do what I love. Collect comics. Lots of them. Possibly, more than others.

Comics have been my childhood passion. I’ve enjoyed them thoroughly. Strangely enough, I still continue to. I have never outgrown them. You’ll still catch me leafing through an Asterix while I’m waiting at the airport or a MAD while spending a lazy afternoon at home.

So, what is this project about? The complete information is here at http://www.Kiruba.com/comics. Head along!

Form what I hear the first edition was a big success and the second one in February 2012 at New Delhi is going to be even better. Its didn’t take me long to make my mind to attend this event. I’ve blocked my dates already.

It’ll be a great opportunity to meet creators, publishers and collectors from the comics industry. They are such a creative lot and am excited to be part of the community.

Now, I’m 38 years old and itching to try. The good thing about growing old is you know that time is running out and its now or never. You have nothing to lose and you are no longer afraid of failing.

And so, I’m gunning for a record. It’s not the Guinness. I’m a pragmatic guy. I know what’s out of my reach when I see one. So, I’m setting my eyes on the Limca Book of Records.

What am I gonna do? Well, I’ll tell you Monday. But meanwhile, I must go to a bookstore and buy myself a copy of the Limca Book of Records…just like how I bought the Guiness Book of Records when I was 12 years old !

I’m not a fan of the Kindle. I have a 2nd generation Kindle lying somewhere in my home for over two years and I have barely used it. However, I’m a huge fan of Jeff Bezos. I have admired his ability to envision long term success while braving a short term hit.

The Kindle is an outstanding example of just that. Amazon doesn’t want to make money off the devices but on the e-commerce that it enables. After all, that’s their core business.

Anyways, this post isn’t about the Kindle. It isn’t even about Jeff Bezos. It’s about the presentation lessons I learned from his Kindle launch.

I started watching the full video recording of Jeff Bezos a couple of days after the actual launch. I was hoping to catch a few minutes of the video but ended up sitting through the entire 51 minutes of the complete talk. I found the talk to be brilliant. Some say, he is no Steve Jobs. I disagree. He was just as good.

Following are the key take always.

Include Criticism: Jeff begins his talk by showing three quotes from people who all predicted absolute doom and failure of the Kindle four years ago. He then proceeds to show the graph where the Kindle books have overtaken the real books in sales. An unusual but effective way to drive home a strong point.

Minimal Text on Screen: The emphasis is on highlighting the most important words or numbers. For example, while announcing the cost of Kindle fire, the screen only had the number $199 in big bold font right next to the picture of Kindle Fire. This helps the viewer to quickly shift their focus back on the speaker instead of spending time reading the screen.

Professional Assistance: There is no doubt that Amazon hired a professional trainer to train Jeff Bezos. Getting a Pro makes perfect sense. This is a big stage and the world is watching. The difference between a mediocre performance and an outstanding one can mean billion dollars worth of sales. Spending a tiny fraction in hiring a professional trainer greatly helps.

Thorough Rehearsals: As the country ambassador for TEDx, I have learned that the greatest of speeches have hours of rigorous, repeated rehearsals hidden behind them. I can see the same in this presentation too. You can see the confidence as he moves from one slide to the next. Its perfectly rehearsed. When you know what’s on the slides, you tend to relax and that greatly helps you deliver a better talk.

Intersperse with Video and Audio: Throughout the 51 minute presentation, you will notice Jeff pepper his talk with video demonstrations and TV advertisements. It helps break the monotony of continuous speech while driving home the point.

Share Limelight With Team: Sharing the spotlight is greatly appreciated. In this presentation, Jeff introduces its new web browser, Amazon Silk. He then quickly gives way to a video which has the actual developers of the browser explain its features and how it is going to improve our browsing experience. Am sure that those developers and their team appreciate that.

Don’t Hide the Screen: Its a subtle but important point that most of us ignore. Jeff is on stage which has a monstrously huge screen. When he is presenting, you will notice that he always is either on the left or right side of the screen making sure not to obstruct the view. You will notice that its almost a conscious decision. Often, as speakers we get so much absorbed in our talk that we naturally gravitate towards the center of the stage. Its only out of practice we can correct this.

Recap Important Points: Jeff does this brilliantly. He introduces almost half a dozen new products in his talks. At the end of each segment where he talks about the product, he has one slide that re-emphasizes the key points before moving to the next product. This is brilliant. He followed an important diktat in presentation: “Say what you are going to say. Say it. Say what you just said”. Brilliant.

Overall, I would give it a double thumbs up. But hey, I’m a Jeff Bezos fan. So, take it with a pinch of salt.

AS I conclude, I noticed one huge difference between a Jeff Bezos product announcement and a Steve Jobs Product announcement. Its the sheer lack of applause.

At an Apple announcement, you will notice this almost cult-like atmosphere. Every announcement is greeted with applause along with a blitz of camera flashes. In this Amazon talk, as Jeff Bezos proudly raises his Amazon Kindle Fire and shows it to the World for the first time, all you hear is radio silence!!

Beyond Barriers is an incredible journey in 80 days through 30 States and Union Territories of India kick-started by Arvind Prabhoo, Sunita Sancheti, Nishant Khade and Neenu Kewlani.

The four of them are enterprising individuals who inspite of their disabilities are striving to see members of the society like them being given equal oppurtunity in Travel and Tourism.

The basic motivation behind this tour is to make the destinations of tourist interest in each state accessible to People with Disabilities (PwD’s), senior citizens, pregnant women & temporarily injured.Thus making India an accessible tourist destination for ALL.

Beyond Barriers is a daring initiative under the aegis of Vijay Merchant Rehabilitation Center for the Disabled (VMRCD). The organization firmly believes in seeing India, our beautiful country as a barrier free nation and making it a tourist destination for all. It is an effort to truly treat all as equal.