Open Sourcing Imagination

So, sometimes my brain tweets out what I call ideas and you may call gibberish. After all there is nothing like absolute reality. Reality depends upon who is looking, upon the observer. This inderminent nature of reality itself, now proven by the science of quantum physics. So, I guess it would be quite alright for you and me to have these somewhat opposing perspectives on what I am about to share with you.

And then if my brainwaves were not warped enough, a noble soul handed me a book called ‘The Medici Effect”. I consumed it with a vengeance. It broke some of the associative barriers in my brain and got those brainwaves riding over this interesting concept of ‘innovation at the intersection’.

The net result was a further explosion of these gibberish ideas! (GIs)

With the pipeline in my brain bursting at the seams, I had another brainwave about how to manage these brainwaves! What if I open sourced them all? Shove them down the Internet pipe and choke that pipe up, instead of my brain.

Extrapolate this thought to all ideas and you will have a place for ideas to roam about, with the kind of euphoria which typically comes with along with a sense of complete freedom. To break away from the shackles of patents, IPR and lawsuits. A creative commons license for ideas.  Available to be adopted by any entrepreneur with a passion for converting ideas into innovations, which change the world or at-least a part of it.

So this blog is an attempt at this thought. Sparking an internet of ideas. Open sourcing imagination.

OSGI #1: EduVille

Every parent closely knows this particular problem statement. It is getting increasingly difficult to get kids interested in studying. There are just too many digital distractions around. On the other hand, in countries such as India, the amount of studies children have to undertake has grown exponentially. It’s a competitive country in a competitive world and the education system is geared towards exposing children to that spirit of extreme competitiveness from an early age! So how to deal with these opposing forces – decreasing mindshare on studies and an increasing load of studies to stay competitive.

This idea is about resolving the above problem in the intersection of three disparate fields - education, gaming and social networking. Start with rote subjects such as history and geography and create interesting, engaging online games which are based around these subjects – use characters from history and places from geography in the games. When the games go viral on Facebook or other social sites, children will be spending a fair amount of time on them and in their sub-conscious learning the subjects which underpin the game. Parents too will encourage children to buy and play these games! Schools will adopt them as well and install them on their library computers.

So anyone out there with the venture cap to launch EduVille on Facebook?

OSGI #2: From SMS to SGS

Quite often you have this surge of affection for someone you love and your heart wants to express this affection by sending him/her a gift. Or you see something a loved one enjoys, let’s say a type of ice-cream and you wish if you could send your loved one this here and now.

This idea is about taking sms to a new level and not just delivering messages but delivering gifts near abouts the speed of sms or a ‘short gift service’. It is also inspired from the world of microfinance, microloans. No doubt the challenge is much bigger than microfinance as this will involve micro logistics.  However I feel we are getting to that inflection point in the connectivity of the globe that someone with scale could actually deliver your wish within a few hours anywhere in the world. It will need a confluence between retailers, logistic companies and a hub platform on the internet/mobile app which accepts sgs and ties up the various players in the value chain to deliver the gift to the recipient. An initial test for this concept could be setting this up within Dubai and India, where a lot of expats have this feeling of guilt about having their old parents alone in India and time and again feel the urge to share with them something they are enjoying at the moment.

So Fedex are you game for SGS?

OSGI #3: Prada Smog Scarf

In a number of developing countries I see two-wheeler riders and especially their companions wrap a cloth around their face to save them from the traffic smog. It must be quite a challenge to get that thing wrapped around you especially when you are getting ready to go to work.

This idea is about first thinking about the design of a scarf with perforations which can be easily smoothened onto your face as you ‘gear’ up to face those polluted roads. And then of course once that design is done we can always look at making it a fashion statement. After all if mobile phones can be designer, why can’t smog scarfs be!

OSGI #4: Swarm BI Bots

The internet is becoming the world’s biggest brain and memory bank. Joe Bloke’s like you and me use the Internet to lookup almost anything we need. “where can I find an Indian restaurant in Innsbruck”  “what is the meaning of the word epiphany” “how much money do I need to carry to Thailand. What is the conversion rate from AED to Thai Baht”. Just feed your queries into the Google search monster and within a few seconds it spurts out an appropriate answer.

Wouldn’t it be great if there was a search engine or a robot on the Internet dedicated to answering my business questions, when I dawn the avatar of my role in my Job. Today not many executives type away at Google to answer some of their searching questions “what has been the pricing trends of my competitors” “is this market in growth or has it reached maturity” “what is the business model of my competitor” “given a set of 10 things which have happened can I predict the competitive actions of my closest foe”

Granted that corporate information is not readily available on the internet and most sensitive information is closely guarded within enterprise firewalls. However I believe that despite these obvious constraints there is still enough corporate information available on the net – due to the pressure of disclosures by stock markets regulators, the fact that a number of the employees are on social networks typing away stuff plus all the freely available industry information.

This idea is about launching a specialized Google for enterprises. This search engine has bots inspired from the swarm technology (which incidentally is inspired from ants) which rummage through the information on the Net and convert them into meaningful intelligence for any enterprise manager. It’s like each executive has his/her very own intelligent pet bot in office. You sensitize it to what you are looking for, make it learn by feeding it some sample data and then unleash it on the Net to revert back with targeted intelligence for your enterprise needs.

If IBM’s Watson can beat humans in a game of Jeopardy with full natural language recognition, I am sure an executive bot pet for the Net can become a significant hit.

OSGI #5: Software Artineering

Something is amiss with the current age software engineering. Something doesn’t feel right about it. Too many projects get botched up and the industry figures on successful large scale IT projects are just appalling. In any other industry this level of a failure rate would have spurred numerous inventions looking to redefine this space.

I feel the issue is with the name itself – software engineering. Is software development or package acquisition and implementation really an engineering task! I am not so sure about it anymore. We might have applied the absolute wrong principles to this discipline and hence confined ourselves to a state of continuous failure.

This idea is about re-imagining the development and implementation of software. Looking at the intersection of art, engineering and software to redefine the way we build software and then deploy software. Art would play a critical role in this re-invention as there is definitely a creative side to imagining and writing software code. The idea is to create an entirely new method and process in the intersection of these fields – let’s call this software artineering.

What exactly will this new world look like, I have no clue. This idea is about having a fresh look, based on a completely new perspective, from a completely different angle and see what pops out. It might be a damp squib or something which re-invents one of the most influential fields of modern times.

That’s all I have in my kitty right now folks and guess what, the brain already feels relieved. The pipeline is now much more relaxed after the unload. There was one other idea which I gave to a couple friends who are serial entrepreneurs, and run an imaginary company called ‘rocket singh’.  If the company and the idea remain imaginary, then I will open source that idea in the sequel to this blog.

If someday any of these ideas transition to an innovation and someone out there makes an enterprise out of them, please remember that charity begins at home and you can start with my home which accepts donations in cash and kind J

With cheers to every Startup out there changing the world, this is Neetan the serial dreamer signing off …..

Honey, i.t just shrunk the world

Once upon a time…

Expressing emotions was linked to being human; today MIT has created a socially intelligent robot Leonardo; go on….. feed the keywords to the Google monster and watch it spurt out a YouTube link to Leonardo.

Powers such as mind control were only bestowed onto the sages who roamed the Himalayan heights and performed their mystical rites. Now we are able control the brain of a fly using Optogenetics. More is yet to come. Check out Gero Miesenboeck  @ Ted for a fascinating talk on this subject.

Mules used to carry our load up the slopes and along many a tricky terrain. Today Boston Dynamic’s ‘Big Dog’ is able to do so with as much dexterity as a real mule. It is completely in control despite a good old kick on its side and just goes about its job unemotionally as an ass would do.

Biology used to be defined as the study of living organisms; today biologyistechnology.com; the human genome project took over 12 years and upwards of 3 billion dollars to sequence the human genome. Today there are startup companies such as Complete Genomics envisioning sequencing your genome for $5000 within a year and maybe $100 within 5 years.  Check out their web site. It could be that of any technology company selling BI solutions, except of course this one is analyzing the dynamics of life itself.

It started with the innocuous printing of greeting cards. Today they are talking about 3D printing human organs!  A whole assortment of innovation is being sparked with 3D printing technology.  It is reaching an inflexion point, all set to take off.

Companies used to protect their IP by filing patents galore; today breakthrough ideas roam freely on Startup web sites, right under the noses of uninterested competitors

We used to prefix sustainable to competitive advantage; today we prefix ephemeral to it.

And there is one factor underpinning all these changes. Technology. THE common denominator.  Powering a wide array of game changing innovations across a spectrum of disciplines.

Now, you may wonder what has genetics got to do with my business or indeed how does an emotional robot threaten my competitive advantage. And for all you know you might be spot on and all this might not impact your business at all. Or maybe, just maybe the creative thoughts these technologies spawn or the branches of mini-innovations they unleash might already be causing small tremors under the foundations of your competitive advantage. Shaking its roots, in preparation for the big one which will uproot your business.

I often wonder about Barnes and Noble’s executive teams having a discussion on Jeff’s innovation on the web, when it was not written about in business books. I can see them saying “Jeff, who?”!  As irony has it, a few years later some of the hot selling, fast moving books on Barnes and Noble’s depleting brick and mortar shelves are about Jeff and his disruptive business model.

The story of course doesn’t stop there. In the next round Amazon again caught the large incumbents napping.  Amazon swept the ground under the feet of big players in IT infrastructure by venturing into and then conquering the world of cloud computing. Who in their wildest dream would have thought about competition in infrastructure provision from a book seller!

So I guess executive teams, irrespective of the business they lead, need to pause, and think deeply about these shifting sands underpinned by exponential movements in technology.

Competitive advantage has indeed gotten ephemeral in the shadow of this continuous barrage of technology innovation.

i.t is indeed shrinking our world.

It is shrinking the distance between you and your competitors.

It is shrinking the distance between you and your customers.

It is shrinking the distance between you and a completely unexpected new entrant.

It is shrinking the distance between imagination and reality.

Are you ready for it?

Are you ready to reimagine your business?

Are you ready to broaden your thinking and perspectives while i.t shrinks the world around you?

The Organic Organisation

World annual FDI inflows rose from an average of $50 billion per year in the period 1981-85 to $1.1 trillion in 2009. A 21 fold increase!

Women in Rwanda have since 2005 been able to display and sell their hand-woven basket creations in Macy’s, at the other end of the world. These baskets sell like hot cake and disappear from the shelves as fast as they appear.

The consultants have a field day on these facts. They announce a new world order. Managers get swayed by the rhetoric. The world is flat; The world is my oyster, it is also my market, as well as my supply chain. Globalization is the predominant force and I better get my strategy’s sails aligned with its strong winds.

Every weekday beginning at 6 a.m., sellers and buyers from around the world converge on the Aalsmeer auction complex near Amsterdam to trade more than 20 million flowers and plants, one-third of which are roses. More than 1,500 foreign growers from countries as far away as Kenya and Israel now send their products to Holland to be auctioned.

G20 governments have introduced more trade barriers, including export restrictions, in the past six months than in previous periods since the financial crisis began, according to the monitoring report by the World Trade Organization on 24 May 2011.

People get 95% of their news from domestic sources.

90% of the world’s people will never leave the country where they are born.

Trade barriers rose thick and fast as soon as the economic going got tough during the recession. Summits designed to curb such practices, with exotic names such as ‘The Doha Rounds’, miserably failed to reach consensus or conclusions.

The currently ongoing G8 summit is like a kitty party; a lot gets discussed, pleasantries get exchanged between expensive suits, biscuits get consumed with disdain, nothing gets achieved.

The consultants announce a new paradigm; The world is as round as round can get. Local is the new global. Better to be a monopoly at home than a grain of sand on the world beach.  I better anchor in my domestic market, in my protected comfort zone. The managers hunker down.

These dynamic paradoxes of our business environment are like Natrajan’s cosmic dance.  In perpetual motion, a constant struggle between crests and troughs, in a state of continuous flux, like the bubbly waters of the Ganges.

Globalization versus protectionism, local versus global, an independent set of nation states versus an integrated global society.

Strategic responses soar to similar paradoxical heights.

Enterprises first vertically integrate to own and control the entire value chain or achieve the zenith of scale and size. They acquire, they merge, they partner. They become behemoths worthy of respect and fear.

Then soon after they shed off SBU’s in a hurry to focus on the core. They de-merge, sell off and divorce away their partners. It was only recently that I read how brilliantly Cisco had acquired Linksys and kept it at arm’s length using the ‘adapt’ rather than ‘aggregate’ strategy for M&A integration. However the tweet world is now alive with the fact that Cisco might sell off Webex and Linksys to focus on its core!

So what does one do in this era of paradoxes? Which strategies to deploy? Which jargon will remain so and which ones will evolve into the next big thing?

I am personally fascinated with the Honeycomb archetype to give organizations a stab at managing life’s increasing paradoxes. To architect the enterprise as a collection of small autonomous cells held together both by a common language and a crystal clear purpose. To power the strategic intent to ‘dream big, deliver small, move fast’.

Maybe it’s time to shed the legacy of legacy organization structures, cut through their fabric and carve out nimble, organizational cells instead. To breakdown big business processes into smaller services, big teams into micro-teams of sizes 3-5.

Maybe it is time to re-invent the way we see an enterprise - from a collection of big departments (HR, Finance, blah blah) to smaller cells each performing a distinctive service, in service of the customer. Self performing, self-motivated high performing cells requiring little supervision or management. As a whole these cells forming an organizational Honeycomb.  A structure designed from ground up to be able to sense and respond to the world’s curve balls. Agile and nimble by birth.

Inspired by nature.

An organic organization.

The four letter conundrum

IT folks have a fetish for equating quality to four letter words.

And size as well as height does matter when it comes to acronyms in the IT world. The higher the level and the more enigmatic sounding the word (I am ISO…….ISO27001!), the higher it moves in our hierarchy of respect. We love these acronyms- CMMI, ITIL, VALIT, COBIT, et al. We include them on our CVs. We proudly use them on our signatures. It’s a secret society created by IT, of IT, for IT.

No one outside, especially our customers in the business understand what the bleep are we talking about!

Before you form an opinion that I do not love these acronyms, hold your horses just yet. I have been in the IT world for 21 plus years now, so YES I too have a fetish for these profound four letters.

Quite often I get off from the wrong side of my right bed, full of pride and honor and announce to my wife how I have attained nirvana in the world of IT four letters. How I have climbed the Himalayan peaks of their levels and achieved lofty heights. How, given my conquest of these insurmountable heights, everyone in the family should bow in front of me and treat me like the God of Geekland, I am .

The response is usually in other four letters which incidentally are also quite famous in the IT world, however best kept verbal in context.

So the point is, whether I can impress my erudite family or not, I too have a passion for these acronyms. They represent an important aspect of quality. Process and frameworks are essential to guide a large workforce towards consistency in the quality of their outcomes.

However there is more to a passion for quality than just frameworks. The secret potion I believe lies in the intent of the workforce, in the shared sensibilities of the people. Therein lies the leadership challenge. How to engage the hearts, minds and the passion of a large workforce to significantly up the ante on quality? How to achieve a state wherein high quality is a way of life and not just a certificate embellishing corporate mahogany walls?

A number of strategies are deployed to try and get close to this state. However my favorite mantra to tackle this challenge, is encapsulated in this beautiful phrase ‘Show me the Taj’

The engineers on project teams and at the back office need to be up, close and personal to the goals their efforts are enabling for the business. They need to feel the pulse of the business and appreciate what underpins success. Sometimes an overdose of vision, mission, core values, value proposition, strategies, goals, objectives and other such terms can confuse the grass roots on exactly where the company is going and what it expects from them. A simple statement of ‘purpose’ which covers the essence can get the message across and its simplicity makes it sticky.

Nothing however beats conversations directly with the business managers to get close to the big picture and the final outcomes expected from IT projects. However the way IT goes about its business today, it ends up creating a two class society – the front office account managers and analysts who get to see and hear the business and the back office engineers who are allocated technical tasks, largely oblivious to or disconnected with the business outcomes.  This way of working seemingly optimizes the use of resources however misses the opportunity to engage the engineers at a deeper level.

There is a big difference in the subconscious engagement if an engineer believes he/she is building a search routine as opposed to knowing that he/she is organizing the world’s information. A big difference in their internal commitment to quality if they believe they are laying a brick as opposed to building the Taj.

Leaders need to build a framework to effectively show the Taj to all team members and in doing so ignite their creative spark and their passion for quality.

In the shadow of the Taj

The tree had a great significance. It was the center of gravity for all romantic activity. The damsel and the dude draped in motley colors went round and round, sometimes across, sometimes in creative new patterns.  After all that beating around the bush, literally, when it came to the much anticipated kiss, the camera just panned upwards, through the branches to the clouds. This left the audience gasping, completely out of breadth after the sensual experience of a romantic Bollywood near-miss, kiss.

The burly buffalos were living examples of the existence of parallel quantum realities. They carved out their own quantum space in the middle of what politicians referred to as roads. Munching away to glory, oblivious to the mass of humanity around them and at peace with the vehicles flowing past in either direction, creating a cacophonic symphony with their horns. The buffalos did not care; they did not lose their temper, did not take stress and maintained a sense of calm and composure. They just enjoyed their siesta time with friends and family. Commuters craftily maneuvered around the buffalos, on what they fondly referred to as a sea of pot holes. Tar was used in dribs and dabs to embellish around the craters, a special form of art perfected by all Government contractors. 

Believe it or not communities existed much before Zuckerberg, frustrated with his inability to join up-market university clubs, created his own on Facebook!  They were particularly rampant in the middle class diaspora. The entire neighborhood was one big family. Love, affection and care flowed freely across and beyond. People lived physically apart but were closely connected through the many peaks and troughs of life.  This social network was unique. It gave all participants a strong base on which to anchor their lives, extended a sense of belonging, wove a safety net around all members and it was a network wholly in flesh, not over wires intertwined through a world wide web.

Calorie was a proper noun. Perhaps the name of a beautiful mademoiselle from the French countryside. No one knew its relationship to food. Three sumptuous meals a day with a disdain for the heart and a carefree delight for the tummy. Oil, butter and ghee flowing through an aromatic kaleidoscope of curries. Exotic spices galore, from all parts of a vast country intermingled with the simplicity of rice and wheat.  Each region, each state, each city, each family using the same ingredients but creating unique culinary experiences. A food connoisseur’s delight.

The snowcapped ranges of the Himalayas reaching out to the skies, paying homage to the myriad Hindu Gods which reside in the heavens above. The pristine and chill waters of the Ganges, hurrying through the planes, greening everything on their way.  In the dimming light of dusk, the flowing waters so often adorned by pretty petite lamps lighted in hope, in prayer, in gratitude. An annual calendar embellished with festivals and festivities. To celebrate relationships, to celebrate love, to celebrate life, with color, with lights, with family, friends, neighbors and utter strangers. A culture of inclusivity in the joys of life, sharing the burdens of pain, a lot of pride and very little prejudice. A deep historic and cultural base built on centuries of human endeavor, tolerance, creativity, music and art.  

This was my India in the 80s. This is where I grew up. This is where I discovered my value system. This is where I nurtured my emotions and my innocence. This is where I discovered my die-hard fetish for curries. This is where I learnt to tolerate, to respect, to include, to honor.

This is where I dreamt about running around that coveted tree!

In the soothing, comforting and romantic shadow of the incredible Taj.

The Leadership Chronicle

I think a leader is someone whom people follow J

How about that!

A simple and effective gauge of a trait which many a management guru has defined using many more esoteric and exotic criteria.

But think about it. You are the leader in your organization. You have charted a clear way forward for where you want to take your enterprise. You are driving ahead with a passion to meet that vision. But when you look behind in enthusiastic anticipation, you find barren and deserted sand dunes. There is no one behind following your lead. Or maybe there are a few tormented souls, driven more by the chains of hierarchy as opposed to the call of their hearts.  If indeed that is the case my friend, then I would conjecture that the arc of your honeymoon period might be long but it will definitely and steadily bend towards failure.

So what does it take for a leader to be followed? Below are some of my favorite mantras on the art of leadership.

A bold vision is paramount. A pessimistic Leader perpetually content with the status quo, with a run of the mill mindset fits like a square in a circle of spiraling change, which underpins business today. Leaders need to carve out visions which catapult their enterprises far ahead of competition. They need to dovetail vision with the ability to take courageous, bold decisions in operations. Don’t just sit there and bask in the success of the status quo, dream big, embrace and drive change and strive for relentless continuous improvement.

The hero stories of the dominant, snooty, ‘I know it all and I will tell you what to do’ leader are ready to be confined to the annals of history. The information age demands a more inclusive and approachable style. I call this ‘benevolent leadership’. Not to be confused with being soft or being uninterested in driving profits for the stakeholders. That is not what I mean by benevolent. The keywords which come to mind in description are ‘genuine, humility, passionate, transparent, inclusive, relaxed persona’. Genuine deserves a special mention. Very often leaders give lip service to open door policies. Their doors are definitely open but minds firmly shut to feedback from the grass roots. And closed minds are openly visible to an increasingly savvy workforce. The days of the dominant boss are numbered if not already extinct. A relaxed and inclusive persona which promotes unhindered expression, open critique and contribution at all levels is the new mantra of the information age.  An age in which contribution more than credentials defines who you are and the fellowship you command.

Perhaps the most important mantra for the leader of this age is the ability to connect with and inspire people. Ability to command loyalty and respect. Ability to delegate and then hold accountable. Ability to create an environment where people bring their heart and souls to work and not just their minds. Some people naively translate all this into being nice and being weak! A leader in this age needs to be simultaneously tough and demanding as well as loved and respected. Today’s workforce is fully plugged in and switched on to reality. They understand that making profit on a sustainable basis requires a leader to act sharply on mediocrity and continuously strive for high performance from the workforce. However leaders get carried away with the demanding part of the equation and conveniently forget the loved and respected bit. A healthy balance in a Leader’s character is critical to take people along on a journey towards the vision. People is the glass ball that a leader is holding. If dropped it won’t bounce back and instead shatter into a thousand pieces, wrecking along with it any dreams of delivering the vision. Inspiring and engaging people is the prime role of the Leader, this is where the rubber hits the road. Add a multicultural workforce to the mix and this task becomes even more daunting. But then, anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm. Surmounting an agitated ocean of people challenges is what distinguishes the men from the boys, the true leaders from the ‘also rans’.

So are you looking to lead in the information age?

Where news and information in the social world moves much faster than you can click send on your corporate email. Where individuals feel fully empowered. Where power has firmly transcended from the masses to the individual. Where the world is truly everyone’s oyster. Where talent can vote with their feet to almost any part of the world. Where the landscape is competitive in real time. Where new business models are getting ready to threaten your vision even as you read this blog.

Well, if this is what you want to do then…

Look over your shoulder and make sure you are being followed by an enthusiastic bunch of inspired, passionate, multi-cultural and capable people, fully in tune with your melody.

THE Valley

I am sure there are a number of nature adorned valleys out there in the world.  However for the quintessential Geek, the one that counts is Silicon Valley, California.

I had an opportunity recently to visit the Valley and explore it up, close and personal.

A couple things that struck a deeper chord…...

And The Oscar goes to

The ecosystem.  

A humming, vibrant, well-oiled ecosystem is at play in the Valley. That’s what makes it tick. That’s what has made it the nerve center for IT innovation. At the heart of the ecosystem are top notch knowledge powerhouses such as Stanford, Berkley, Carnegie Mellon et al.  Their focus – to work at the grass roots level and provide a breeding ground for learning, experimentation and research.

Then there is the funding tributary next to the Bay. A high density cluster of Venture Capitalists and Angel investors whose bread and butter business model is to connect funds with innovations, to breathe life into ‘workable’ ideas and convert Joe Blokes like you and me into serial entrepreneurs.

This network’s nodes are also embellished with some of the top companies in the world who either grew up there from startup or have been born somewhere else but have setup their innovation labs in the Valley. All this attracts the world’s best geek talent and media celebrates each success of every new startup and/or entrepreneur publicly. This creates an atmosphere of excitement and happening in the Valley. Even the almighty contributes by adorning the region with a nippy and sunny climate throughout the year.

The ‘ecosystem pattern’ is a winning business model. Each node feeds the other and the network effect creates a virtuous cycle of continuous and sustainable innovation. Fascinating, to say the least.

A free and empowered human spirit

Quite often individual passion for unhindered expression, the inherent human need to contribute, to accomplish, to fail, to get up and run again, the sharpness of individual intellect, the carefree human spirit, is stymied by an undertone of racial, cultural and all other exotic forms of discrimination.

However in the Valley I sensed that history had broken its shackles and leaped into the 21^st century. The human spirit is free. To explore, to express, to challenge, to learn, to share, to contribute, to accomplish, to cherish, to celebrate. Nobody seemed to give a two hoots where you came from. No one asked, no one told, no one bothered. All that mattered was what you knew, what inventions you were cooking, what value you could contribute. I met professionals, youngsters, academics, fund raisers - people from all walks of life all glowing in the bright sunshine of true human empowerment.  A diversity in form tightly bound by an aptitude for software engineering, a love for IT and a passion for disrupting existing paradigms. It is no wonder that this free human spirit is able to unleash its potential time and again and drive a continuous flow of innovations along the pristine and blue waters of the adjoining Bay.

The Valley more than lived up to its expectations.

It is humming with excitement.

In abated anticipation for the next wave of innovations that it is fondly nurturing in its cradle.