Yantrakaal

 I spoke about this unique concept at the Technology Forecast Conference organised by PricewaterhouseCoopers Ltd in Calcutta on 26th September 2013 at the Hyatt. At the end of the presentation, I asked members of the audience to send me an SMS and  vote on whether they thought that there would be an internet of human minds in the next 50 years. 16(+1, added later) people voted YES, 6 people voted NO.

The Kedarnath Temple that was nearly destroyed in the recent natural calamity has now been thrown up to the public again but a lot of reconstruction and rehabilitation has be done to bring this tiny temple town to its pristine glory. We had been to Kedarnath and Badrinath in 1997 and here are some ancient pictures that are in our treasured memory. notice the snow in the courtyard of the Kedarnath temple and this was June-July. This was the Bharat Sevasram Sangha guest house or dharmashala that we stayed in. After the stiff Kedarnath trek, we had some rest at this beautiful tent colony and Nandaprayag, right next to the rushing Alakananda River Next stop was Badrinath the soaring Neelkantha Mountain ............................................................................................................................. and here are a few more pictures from this trip Karnaprayag Lachchhmanjhoola ...

MBA programs in India, and perhaps abroad as well, are at the crossroads. While the top 3 IIMs may be comfortably placed with their placement story, students of other B-Schools in the country are in a state of tension -- will they or will they not be placed in a job of their choice ? In this post, we explore how the famous German system of Dual Vocational Training (TVET) can make an MBA program more meaningful for corporates, students and for the teaching institution. As I have argued in another post, B-Schools and the Placement Syndrome , placements are the only reason why B-Schools exist ! We may talk about research in management and of papers  being published in respected journals like Management Science but 99% of B-School students, the primary customers who actually pay for the faculty and the infrastructure, do not really care about such stuff. To them, the reputation of a B-School depends on the percentage of the graduating batch that is placed and the average salary ...

at the Public Relations Society of India, Kolkata Chapter, annual event at the ITC Sonar, Calcutta on 22nd June 2013, where I spoke about Personal TV Channels

I know that Social Media is the toast of the town but boy, am I getting tired of it ! You may say that I am being a hypocrite, since I post regularly on Twitter (hence automatically by  passthrough on Facebook ) and Linkedin, but I will be frank and admit that I do so more out of habit and perhaps out of a misplaced sense of necessity. Habit is understandable. At Level 4 of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, one needs esteem, the acceptance by one's peers and it does give you a kick if your post is liked and commented upon by a small band of people who form a mutual appreciation society. Of course, the key word in the last sentence is mutual -- if you want your posts to be liked and commented upon, then you have to return the favour as well and this is where the habit part kicks in. But other than casual chit-chat or  twitter (the guys who created this phenomenon, could not have named it any better) I doubt if social media has any purpose other than to keep an idle mind busy ! ...