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5G at a glance

We all have been reading a lot about the launch of 4G in India.  The air is filled with buzz as many types of debate and discussions are taking place.   Today articles are being written on what will happen in terms of pricing and completion with the launch of 4G by one of the major telecom players. This made me wonder what will come next after 4G. Is 5G waiting for us in offering?

With this curiosity, I surfed the internet to discover the when, what, who and where about 5G. Read More…

7 Questions with Biren Parekh

This sure made my day! Here is a link to my latest interview – 7 Questions with Biren Parekh. Jonno White is a highly effective and experienced leadership coach. He has transformed several large and medium-sized corporations through his leadership coaching. 

One can read answers to the following 7 questions in my interview

 

  1. What have you found most challenging as a CEO or executive of a large enterprise?
  2. How did you become a CEO or executive of a large enterprise? Can you please briefly tell the story?
  3. How do you structure your work days from waking up to going to sleep?
  4. What’s the most recent significant leadership lesson you’ve learned?
  5. What’s one book that has had a profound impact on your leadership so far? Can you please briefly tell the story of how that book impacted your leadership?
  6. How do you build leadership capacity in a large enterprise?
  7. What is one meaningful story that comes to mind from your time as a CEO or executive of a large enterprise so far?

 

Grateful to my company Intellect Design Arena Ltd for the opportunity and freedom to showcase my leadership strength over years. 
 
Waiting to hear your thoughts!

 

 

 

 

Agile V/s Waterfall – A Comparision

We have been hearing a lot about comparison between Waterfall project management versus Agile. And many of us have been dilemma as what exactly each one means & which one to use. 

To address this, I am hereby publishing a Presentation prepared by Mr Koti, who is PMP, ACP, PSM1, PAHM, CSP, ITIL & PMI India Senior Champion. Pls click here to view the same.

AHA Moments

💡AHA Moments!!! 🪄

The moments ✨when people have realized what to do in life!!! ❄️

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines an Aha moment 🎊 as a moment of sudden realization, inspiration, insight, recognition, or comprehension. In the context of SaaS and product companies, the Aha! Moment is the first key moment when users realize the value of your product.

Few examples of AHA 🌟💫moments. Note the Age when these celebrities have realized their AHA moment and discovered the valuable 🏅 products!!!!

Any other examples???

Waiting for my AHA moment!!! 😊

#aha #ahamoment #ahamoments #invention #discovery #productinnovation #creativity #creativityandinnovation

ANI

It was nice to see “Thank you Note” from Agile Network India. 👌

It was an interesting panel discussion with eminent panelists (Sandhya Vasudevan and Ashutosh Dabral) and moderated by Yashasree Barve.

I have been speaker/panelist 🎤of Agile Network India conferences multiple time and I have thoroughly enjoyed taking part as a speaker/panelist due to two reasons

1 – Unique topics
2 – Well organized

Kudos 👍 to Priyank DK PathakNoopur PathakPrashant M J and team for advocating Agile mindset through such conferences and webinars.

#agilenetworkindia #agilemindset #agileleadership #speakers #panelists #agile #thankyou

Anil Kumble

👉It was quite inspiring to meet the legendary Anil Kumble during one event. I am always inspired by leaders 🧑‍💼and honest celebrities 👑 like him, which keeps me going. His perseverance and focus is one quality that inspires me a lot.

Everyone knows this fantabulous ✨cricketer, also known by his nickname Jumbo, holds the record of bowling 40,850 balls in the entire Test career, which is the highest for an Indian and second-highest overall, and he is also one of six bowlers to take 900+ (956 to be precise) wickets in his entire career. He holds several other records, awards, and honors far beyond one’s imagination.

▶️ He once said that no one should tell from your body language, whether you are at “50 for 5” or “200 for no loss”. And I think the same applies to leaders in whatever field you are.

▶️Similarly, among several rituals for preparation, which included training properly, eating right, and sleeping well, “visualization”, he said, was key.  A day before the match, I would think of each batsman of the opposing team, one at a time, and visualize how I was going to get them out. I would picture the fielder’s positions, my bowling technique, the strategy I would use,”

The same applies to leaders to visualize the upcoming situation and define the strategy to make it 💫successful.

Who inspires you most??

#training #event #leaders #strategy #language #visualization #team #motivation #author #speaker #inspirationalleader #career #quality

Are mobile Banking Apps Safe?

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When Internet banking was launched by some private banks few years back i.e. around 2005, customers were apprehensive of using it. In year 2013, several private banks launched their mobile banking apps. At this point also, customers were merely wondering what mobile banking was and whether these kinds of applications were safe to use.

However, over the years, these applications have made our lives easy and banking customers have become quite comfortable with new technologies. They are using internet banking for balance inquiries as well as other things like funds transfer, credit card payment, utility bills payment and even equity trading. The Complex encryption software makes sure to protect your valuable information. However, every system has its flaw.  Your account is at the risk of being attacked by hackers, phishing, malware and illegal activities. Read More…

Colgate Ad

In one of WhatsApp groups, I read the message that an actor was required in the age group of 40-50years. Since I am partly bald, I thought why not to call the given number. So, I called the given number and they asked me if I could quickly send some pictures and a profile video. Without waiting, I dropped some of my images and shot a video using my mobile.

Hurray!!! I was told that this is for a Colgate ad being shot by Equinox Films. I was asked to come for the costume trial on 2nd March. I was wondering whether I will be selected or not.  So, I asked the person again and I got an affirmative response. I was shocked on hearing this.

I got a call from the costume team and I was asked to bring certain clothes. I happily carried some with me. And they selected some from the clothes I was carrying. Then we were taken to the director, who briefed us about the role play. It was quite exciting to know all this.

I was picked up the next day i.e. 3rd March, Sunday morning along with the other actors who were to participate. The set was located at the Forbes building in Kala Ghoda. Although I was shooting for an ad for the first time, they treated me nicely.

We were told that the shooting is going to take place in two languages-Hindi and Tamil. The different scenes and retakes kept on going the whole day. The director, Sandeep Modi was amazing and the way he kept directing the shoot was praise-worthy.

After a long wait, the advertisement finally got released in first week of May. It was a proud moment for me and for my family. Although I only appeared for a second or so, it felt great to see myself on TV. Hopefully, the ad appearing in the cinemas will be slightly longer and I will have some more screen time.

​I am looking forward for an alternate career.

Dunbar’s Number

Have you heard about Dunbar’s number?

💡 It is 150.

Recently I read the story about it and awestruck by the research about this number.

This number was first proposed in the 1990s by British anthropologist Robin Dunbar, who found a correlation between primate brain size and average social group size. It is a suggested cognitive limit to the number of people 👨‍👩‍👦‍👦 with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. He found that the number of social group members 👨‍👩‍👦‍👦 a primate can track appears to be limited by the volume of the neocortex which is 150.

Some analysis suggests that even in the age of social media we can’t be friends meaningfully with more than that number of people and humans can comfortably maintain 150 stable relationships (100-250 is range but 150 is commonly used).

 

In addition to Dunbar’s number, anthropological research shows that the type and depth of relationship we can have with people has clear limits:

 

🔹 Around five people—limit of people with whom we can hold close personal relationships and working memory
🔹 Around fifteen people—limit of people with whom we can experience deep trust
🔹 Around fifty people—limit of people with whom we can have mutual trust
🔹 Around 150 people—limit of people whose capabilities we can remember

Some companies create offices based on this rule. As soon as they reach around 150-200 numbers, they might prefer to open a new floor or new office to ensure cohesiveness among the working group.

Dunbar’s number has attracted a great deal of attraction over the years and Dunbar’s number yields many papers on Google Scholar and hits on Google.

One can claim relations with a large number of persons beyond this but they should understand that many relations beyond this number will be more of acquaintance and no meaningful relationship.

Modern world Marketing technology proposes to beat this number using Marketing automation, CRM & referral automation.

While some may argue that this might be applicable to early-age hunter-gatherers and the human brain has evolved now over the years, but I agree that this number (150) is a realistic number.

What are your thoughts!!!!

Facial Recognition Tech: A friend or a foe?

Understanding the Fight Against Facial Recognition

The growth of Clearview AI as a startup focusing on facial recognition is momentous. That could be largely linked to their alliance with law enforcement agents that are using the platform widely. While there exists little to no regulation around how this kind of tech is used, that has not stopped business from booming for all the parties involved.

There are outcries against the privacy invasion that comes in the way of facial recognition too. Recently, a hack of the company brought fresh debates to the fore about how safe facial data can be when with keepers like that – and how such data will also be used.

 

Facial Recognition Isn’t Your Friend

Surveillance has always been a touchy subject. So that the state does not go beyond reasonable means in surveilling an individual, certain laws and regulations were made. This requires that even law enforcement agents obtain permission from the judiciary arm of government before they can put anyone under surveillance.

Even at that, this surveillance has to be proportionate.

None of such moves has been placed around facial recognition. Not on a large scale, at least.

Before the Clearview AI hack was reported, the company admitted to having more than 3 billion faces on record. That is more than a third of everyone on the planet as of this moment. Seeing as many countries have not even heard of the company, that is shocking that they would have that many faces on file.

Official statements from the company claim that it mines data from social media networks and other open-source platforms for its database. In other words, they can collect picture you posted on the internet to populate a database of facial recognition technology. The important part of this business is remembering that all of this is done without your giving them any express permission to take such advantages of your image rights.

Social media platforms like YouTube, Google, and Facebook have already reached out to this company with a cease and desist. That is a laudable move to protect users, but we are just seeing one side of a bad coin. Facebook itself runs in-house facial recognition software which you have to manually turn off.

Recalling how many scandals Facebook has gotten into in the previous decade alone, we do not know if they would honor any privacy requests from the users. Thus, those pictures you removed facial recognition access from could still be in the system for all that we know.

If these systems were as good as they are claimed to be, we might not have much against them. Instead, there is a huge bias against races and women. This is not a basic fault of the technology itself but how it was trained. After all, it can only adapt to the models that it has been trained with, of which there is a gross under-representation of the negatively affected population density.

Such can lead to cases of false positives or negatives. Depending on how you look at it and the prevalent situation, it is never good news.

 

Where Do We Go from Here?

San Francisco has banned the widespread use of technology in the city. This is a huge move 

from the city that considers itself one of the biggest, if not the biggest, concentrated tech hub in the world. If they cannot make such brazen moves to defend how tech is used, they might as well be a serious part of the problem in the tech space.

Other states and cities are working on similar moves, but they are not working fast enough.

 The need for a widespread ban right now is not for the hate of facial tech systems but the lack of a regulatory framework within which it works. If we do not have that, it is just a matter of time before everyone has a facial recognition system of their own and takes stalking to a whole new level.

That is not something we are willing to take. Till things improve, the fight against facial recognition will remain.

Biren Parekh