Skype goes public...files for Initial Public Offering (IPO)

I feel like a proud father whose son has graduated high school who is on his way to an Ivy League. Skype, the most popular Voice-over IP service is going public! Skype which was found in 2003 was acquired by eBay in 2005 for $2.6bn. It makes me happy to see a company that was formed not too long ago, going public. Skype provides incredible value to the world’s internet users, saves them money, and makes their lives easier and a little more convenient. We all know that if you can improve people’s lives & add value, you will be rewarded…the money will follow. This is the reason I am proud of Skype. I use Skype at home, companies and organizations use Skype in the office. In fact, many companies are encouraged to use Skype for international calls, rather than use the company phone, for the obvious reason-Skype saves companies millions of dollars in international calls. That is a real value.

Congratulations Skype, can wait to watch you graduate college-whatever that metaphor translates to.

The brain – remembrance

memory: the power of retaining & recalling past experience
remembrance: the ability to recall past occurrences

How is it that I am able to remember the words of the song that I learnt at 7 years old?
How am I able to remember
-all 4, old and new, email accounts' usernames & passwords?
-my banks’ usernames & passwords?
-my ATM PINS?

How on earth was I able to memorize one of my bank's account number and routing number?

How was I able to memorize my SSN? Okay, I guess most people remember that one.

The brain is awesome!

We have evolved computers that can compute mathematics faster than the human brain can. However, we haven’t perfected image recognition, & voice recognition in computers. Today, the computer insn’t as creative as the brain is…maybe later…

Computers have a long way to go

Full time student...no more

I recently filled a form at the dentist's office.

"Are you a full time student?"
I checked "No" for the 1st time in my life, after 26 years.

Woo! That is almost 3 decades of studying. No wonder I have a small headache. Being a student is great in many ways, but that is a topic for a different blog. But being out of school, I can actually 'do'.

What do I mean by 'do'?

I can create things now. Things that I do not have to turn in on monday morning for a letter grade. In addition to creating, I get paid for the same projects that I did in college, at work. Google's Marisa Mayer said, "Google is like Stanford, with stock options"

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Team Leadership in College

Team Leadership in College

Aug 15, 2010

In all of my college & grad school courses, I do not remember any one course/project where a team leader was selected.

Our projects usually went something like this- "Okay, the 5 of us are here for this Marketing project for the rest of the semester. I guess let's divide tasks among ourselves...and we'll see how it goes..." This was the way teams worked in my experience during college.

A leader for the team was never explicitly chosen. Usually, over time, you got the sense that Mary was the unofficial team leader, or me, or Ola. Someone usually either takes the stage as the leader or finds his/herself delegating duties and stuff.

This is fine, but the problem with not explicitly naming one as the head is that no one takes the blame when things go wrong. I would encourage teachers & professors to have their class teams to select a team leader in every project. This way, everyone knows who to report to. Tasks are delegated properly, and when the "defecation hits the oscillation" (-credit http://twitter.com/jeffcannata), we know who to blame...and that is important in preparing students for life.