One of our blog readers asked an interesting question the other day: “How to be the best” in what you do ? I guess a cliched answer would be “there is no silver bullet as an answer”. But really, this question interested me, because in work life, so many people approach us saying “they are so busy to do anything else” and that their work life is killing their personal life. These are what I consider to be the basic tenets of “striving to be the best”. Just like the United Airlines ad. puts it “Where you go in life is upto you. There is one airline that can take you there”, these thoughts can help take you to your goals: Listen – The more you listen, the more you’d learn how little you know. In my field of technology, there are so many smart people doing great things that you are always learning (and I bet that is true for any field). Talk to people, ask for their opinions, let them feel good that they are being asked for advice. They may say twenty things out of which you may not have known one Talk – Any person who

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A good process is really like a well designed resilient network. No one really appreciates it when everything is working as it should. But when something does not work and suddenly ‘well designed individual elements’ fail miserably as a complete network while interacting with each other, all hell breaks loose. I noticed an interesting email the other day where a poster mentioned that he was running a ‘Session Border Controller’ (those ugly things that act as security gateways in a network). Obviously the maker of the SBC convinced the user that at most, he should not see more than 100 transactions per second in the network, even if the network had a total of 10,000 phones. And the vendor was correct, under normal conditions. Unfortunately, for the user, his network had a power failure and his backup power failed too – and all of a sudden, all the 10,000 phones rebooted and tried to contact the SBC at the same time to ‘re-register’. *BOOOM* the SBC crashed. Will the user ever go back to an SBC from a vendor who did not guard for exceptions (even if it is 20% cheaper) ? Once bitten, twice shy. A well defined process

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There is a saying that goes like this ‘Knowledge is a function of your intelligence, while Wisdom is a function of your experience, which itself is a function of time’ As we all grow older, our priorities morph, we get a bigger picture of what matters in life and we also get to reflect on our past. As we continue with the cycle of time, we also realize that the only way to understand these changes in priority is to experience it ourselves. After all, it is most likely that a few years ago, we ourselves would have shunned something a as ‘Whoa ! We will never give this more importance’ till we actually face it. There comes a time in life, when you stop thinking that you are the most intelligent being on the planet and learn to respect the thoughts and experiences shared by others. So, back to the topic of this post. What really is job satisfaction ? I guess it really is a factor of the stage in life that you are in. (click on thumbnail for a larger version) 1-2yrs: You start as a fresh young engineer, wanting to make big money. Your loyalty belongs

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Most of us in the Software field would have read ‘The World is Flat’ by Thomas Friedman. If you have not already, do pick up a copy. While re-reading it today, a paragraph by David Schelesinger, an employee of Reuters rang a bell in me (again). I thought his thoughts were especially succint in prompting people to stop asking “What will I tell my kids” and instead ask “What can I do to keep in the value chain“. The entire justification for outsourcing is often very personal and subjective, but I found this paragraph to focus on the real issue on ‘Where is your value in the value chain’. This paragraph is straight out of the book, due credit goes to David Schelesinger, Reuters and my source for this information, Thomas Friedman of ‘The World is Flat’ for reproducing it. Please click on the image to see the full text. Technology, VoIP, SIP, IMS, Marketing, Corporate Management

Sorry for the lack of posting the past few weeks – I was/am busy designing an IMS network for an agressive carrier (yeesh !) Some tips I wrote up a long time ago for making effective presentations. Always have an Agenda slide – and at the beginning ask if the customer would like to change the flow Before you start, ask the customer for a time-check so you can best fit your presentation according to the time slot Americans in general are very open conversationalists – an (appropriate) joke here and there or a side conversation to make a presentation more interesting is taken well Avoid ‘speaking loud’ – many people tend to switch on their internal boom-boxes when presenting. It really sounds like those looney Americal Idol participants who think screaming while singing shows tone control. Always keep your presentation interactive – if you see no one asking you questions, more likely than not, you are boring those who are listening Try and keep your presentation short at the first level (5-7 pages for corporate, 10-15 for technical). Remember that customers always look at your page count to see how much is left, especially if it’s a boring presentation.

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