SAST Wingees » Unsung Blogger.. http://www.sastwingees.org Knowledge is Scrumptious Sun, 05 Feb 2012 13:15:49 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Why American kids don’t take up science & technology careers? http://www.sastwingees.org/2009/05/01/why-american-kids-dont-take-up-science-technology-careers/ http://www.sastwingees.org/2009/05/01/why-american-kids-dont-take-up-science-technology-careers/#comments Fri, 01 May 2009 11:42:47 +0000 Sukumar http://www.sastwingees.org/?p=1319 Tweet

Updated 2 May 2009: Received some wisdom from twitterers – @Shogun1947 @priyraju @akumaran

Prolog

On my internal to company blog i had introduced a new idea a few months back – in the prolog section of every blog post, i provide a link to interesting posts i had read that week. To my surprise, this has become very popular. This is somewhat like the FTOTW (fine tastings of the week) series i used to run on this blog. I decided to try the same idea on this blog also.

FTOTW

First, A. Prem, one of Cognizant’s Social CRM experts, blogs regularly about Social CRM on his blog. He has a tremendous grasp of the subject. He writes one of the leading blogs inside the company as well.  Rachel Laudan, one of my food anthropology blog friends, lives and blogs from Mexico. She has some great updates on the Swine Flu epidemic.  Bob Sutton paraphrases Scott Berkun to explain how managers become a**holes. How Apple Cofounder Steve Wozniak gets things done.  Saraswathi, a former colleague, who now works in the social sector, had written a brilliant post on relationships a while back. must read.

Science  & Technology Careers in America

As someone who had lived in the USA for 10 years, i feel sad about the fact that American kids don’t take up science & technology careers as much as America needs them to.  The huge skills shortage that America faces is either filled by immigration or by outsourcing to other countries like India and China.

The stats from graduate programs and PhD programs also don’t bode that well. As of 2006, over 51% in grad programs in EE were foreign nationals and 71% in PhD programs were foreign. I don’t know how accurate these stats are. But the general perception in America is that Americans don’t like science & technology careers.

Paradise of Science

During our time in America, we used to wonder about, the kind of resources that are available to an American kid that Indian kids can not even dream. Every small city has a well-stocked library, a science center in the vicinity, several museums.

Even if one is a wee bit scientifically minded, there is plenty of resources to tap into.

By contrast, a city that plays host to over 6 MM people, Chennai, India does not have one well equipped museum or science center or library.

But Indian middle class kids, are taught right from when they are in the womb, that science  & technology careers are the be-all and end-all of living in this world.  Yes, this does create a large stereotypical population. But hey, how does that matter? When we want to find folks for science & technology jobs, we can find them easily without having to import them.

I am trying to find out, why American kids consider science & technology careers boring or geeky or nerdy or whatever?

What can be done to change this attitude of the American kids?

Epilog

If i am lucky, i may get to work in a project to improve American kids’ attitude towards science & technology careers. Please help me with your wisdom.

]]> http://www.sastwingees.org/2009/05/01/why-american-kids-dont-take-up-science-technology-careers/feed/ 36 Blog Pongal – Fine Servings of the past 2.5 years – part 1 – Year 2004/2005 http://www.sastwingees.org/2007/01/14/blog-pongal-fine-servings-of-the-past-25-years-part-1-year-20042005/ http://www.sastwingees.org/2007/01/14/blog-pongal-fine-servings-of-the-past-25-years-part-1-year-20042005/#comments Mon, 15 Jan 2007 04:58:36 +0000 Sukumar http://www.sastwingees.org/2007/01/14/blog-pongal-fine-servings-of-the-past-25-years-part-1-year-20042005/ Tweet

Updated Jan 16,2007: Wonderquest home page now features a link to the Non-Human Farmers post mentioned below. Thanks April.

As you all know, i have adopted an analogy to food for the theme of this blog with “Knowledge is Scrumptious” – knowledge as nourishment for the brain. That is also the reason i call my links of the week post – Fine Tastings of the Week or simply FTOTW. Today is Pongal, the tamil harvest festival and I decided to celebrate with my own harvest festival on this blog with a question – why not harvest the best posts that I have made over the past 2.5 years and do this every year on Pongal day? I am calling it Blog Pongal – Fine Servings of The Year, since these posts are dishes i have cooked for your as well as my brain’s pleasure. This blog gets between 50-70 visitors a day depending on what the Google god ordains (over 95% of non-subscription visits are referred by Google for the statistically minded). Given that meager traffic volume, i could not use the no. of visits to a post to pick the best ones. Instead, i decided to pick the best posts based on whether they appear in the first page of Google search results. Using that methodology, here are the finest servings on this blog for the past 2.5 years – part 1: [Note this is in regular chronological order, oldest first] :

1. Probably my earliest interesting posts – Ashta bil Asal – a lebanese sweet . Still generates traffic and is in the Top 5 for Lebanese Sweet and Ashta Recipe on Google.

2. Master of the “S” curve – this one caught the attention of Joe Kissell at ITOTD and led to my posts on ITOTD (see links on right hand column of the blog) including the one on Non-Human Farmers, which I consider to be my best post on Science till date.

3. Longtail business models – This is a top 3 on Google for “longtail business models”. This is not exactly a great post because i did not write any original content, but I included this here because this post marks a turning point in my blogging career – the point at which for me blogging started giving me learnings and true knowledge some of which i could apply back at my work.

4. My series on Microsoft Avalon – top 5 on google for “smart client avalon”.

5. iPod SD – My conceptualization of how Apple could attack the smart phone market. Now Apple is releasing a full-fledged iphone instead of a add-on strategy that i came up with. This post is my best work in the technology area till date and is the most popular post on this blog.

6. How the paleolithic technique Fermentation changed the world? I was inspired by Mark Kurlansky’s Cod and Salt to write this up. No.1 link on Google for “Paleolithic Fermentation”. Did you know that Fermentation was behind the founding of Israel? read the last link on this post for details.

7. Collective blogging wisdom from the unsung blogger series. This post was Desipundited.

8. A Question of Taste – is it 4 or 6? No.1 link on google for “4 tastes”. Another post inspired by Mark Kurlanksy. It was Desipundited.

9. 4 more types of peoples based on communication styles. This post was linked to by Communication Nation, the CEO of meetup.com, Vinnie Mirchandani and others.

10. New York Times linked to Sast Wingees – a proud moment for me.

11. My first moblog (mobile blogging) experience on my Italy trip. The posts from this series are in the Google Top 10 for many keywords. If you reached this far and you celebrate Pongal – Happy Pongal! Continued over to year 2006 in part 2. read on.

]]> http://www.sastwingees.org/2007/01/14/blog-pongal-fine-servings-of-the-past-25-years-part-1-year-20042005/feed/ 0 Unsung Blogger of the week #14 http://www.sastwingees.org/2005/12/12/unsung-blogger-of-the-week-14/ http://www.sastwingees.org/2005/12/12/unsung-blogger-of-the-week-14/#comments Tue, 13 Dec 2005 03:48:00 +0000 Sukumar http://www.sastwingees.org/2005/12/12/unsung-blogger-of-the-week-14/ Tweet

This week’s featured blogger is 21-year-old Daniel Hegder from Australia. He has been maintaining his blog hedger.blogspot.com since September 2004. Text from the email interview follows.

1. ‘Please write a brief profile of you and your involvement with blogging.’
I am a 21 year old student from Melbourne, Australia, currently studying Criminology and Anthropology. I’m also a singer and budding writer.
At first I started blogging because I didn’t understand what the fuss was about. When I started getting into comedy writing, I realised my blog could be a creative outlet and have treated my blog in this way. I prefer this to the ‘diary’ style blogs, which can often be tedious.

2. ‘How do you publicize your blog?’
Aside from having it listed in various profiles for message boards etc. that I might contribute to, my blog gets very little publicity.

3. ‘Which techniques have worked for you and which ones have not?’
Reading other people’s blogs and leaving comments can be a good way to publicise your blog. However, if you comment on blogs that are dissimilar to yours, this won’t necessarily work. Also, very popular blogs get so many comments that it can be hard to get noticed by commenting alone. When it comes down to it, people just have to make that leap and check it out for themselves.

4. ‘What do you consider as your best post so far? You can include upto 3.’
That’s a hard one. After the London bombings earlier this year, I did a series of blog entries about different ways of dealing with terrorism (for example, http://hegder.blogspot.com/2005/07/governments-consider-abolition-of.html and http://hegder.blogspot.com/2005/07/our-impotence-in-face-of-terrorism-is.html). One from July 8,  ”Guy Tries to Masturbate Fear of Terrorism Away” was a little controversial.
http://hegder.blogspot.com/2005/07/guy-tries-to-masturbate-fear-of.html

5. ‘What are your Top 5 Unsung Blogs ? (please include only those that
are not in any Top 100/500 lists).’
I’m not sure if these are on any Top Lists, but anyway:
Toe to Toe – http://www.steppinonyou.blogspot.com/
Bitch Pulled My Weave Out – http://psychadelicbuttersnazzy.blogspot.com/
81 Vaginas – http://81vaginas.blogspot.com/
Japanese Lee – http://japanlee.blogspot.com/
BoltWatch – http://boltwatch.blogspot.com/

6. ‘What are your current book recommendations ? (1 or 2 is
sufficient).’
A Devil’s Chaplain – Richard Dawkins

7. ’How is the blogging scene in Australia?’
Thriving. There’s no shortage of Australian blogs, anyway.

]]> http://www.sastwingees.org/2005/12/12/unsung-blogger-of-the-week-14/feed/ 0 Unsung Blogger of the Week #13 http://www.sastwingees.org/2005/12/03/unsung-blogger-of-the-week-13/ http://www.sastwingees.org/2005/12/03/unsung-blogger-of-the-week-13/#comments Sat, 03 Dec 2005 20:58:00 +0000 Sukumar http://www.sastwingees.org/2005/12/03/unsung-blogger-of-the-week-13/ Tweet

This week’s featured blogger is 22-year-old Vijay Krishna from Chennai, India (at last, someone from my home town!). He has been maintaining his current blog vkpedia since May 2005, alt hough he has been blogging for the past 3 years. Text from the email interview follows:
1. Please write a brief profile of you and your involvement with  blogging.
I’m a software engineer, working out of Chennai, India. I’m interested 
in a variety of things, one of them being blogging. I find it a natural vent
for my thoughts. I’ve been blogging on and off for almost three years 
now. VKpedia is my only serious (?) effort. Predictably, it is a 
play on Wikipedia. 2. How do you publicize your blog? No real publicity efforts. However, I try to leave comments in blogs, and 
this I’ve found drives people to mine. 3.. Which techniques have worked for you and which ones have not? Content. That is what works. I’ve discovered quite a few good blogs, 
may not be very popular, yet rich in content, and then they become popular. 
So, the technique is good content. Another is to find out what others 
feel about a topic you’re interested in or have written about. 
Technorati, IceRocket, even Blogger Search are quite useful. 4. What do you consider as your best post so far? You can 
include upto 3. That’s a toughie. Probably the entire Notes of a Nomad series, the Thiruvasagam review 
[Excellent review. Need to listen to the CD I bought a while ago after this! - Ed.], 
and Dude, where’s my shirt? 5.   What are your Top 5 Unsung Blogs ? (please include only those that are not in 
any Top 100/500 lists). That’s tougher still. I’ll suggest 
Joe Anderson’s Webby’s World, 
Soumyadip Chatterjee’s Mindless Musings, 
Anthony’s A Journey Called Life, 
maverick’s freewheelin, 
and Mandar Talvekar’s Ink Scrawl. 6.  What are your current book recommendations ? (1 or 
2 is sufficient). Freakonomics is definitely the book of the year, according to me. 
[Sibu was not impressed. Check out his rant. -Ed.]
I would also recommend Tuesdays with Morrie. 7. What are your current movie recommendations 
(1 or 2 is sufficient). None in particular. I would recommend Yves Robert’s 
My Mother’s Castle (it’s not a 2005 movie though) and 
Parineeta.

]]> http://www.sastwingees.org/2005/12/03/unsung-blogger-of-the-week-13/feed/ 1 Collective Blogging Wisdom from the Unsung Blogger Series http://www.sastwingees.org/2005/11/30/collective-blogging-wisdom-from-the-unsung-blogger-series/ http://www.sastwingees.org/2005/11/30/collective-blogging-wisdom-from-the-unsung-blogger-series/#comments Thu, 01 Dec 2005 02:01:03 +0000 Sukumar http://www.sastwingees.org/2005/11/30/collective-blogging-wisdom-from-the-unsung-blogger-series/ Tweet

Due to the Thanksgiving holiday last week, I could not feature a new blogger this week. To make amends, I decided to summarize the ideas that have been accumulated so far on Blogging. If you
want to experiment with blogging or if you already maintain a blog, some of these ideas may help you. 1. First, its important to understand the 3 major types of Blogs – Cat Blogs, Boss Blogs and Viral Blogs. Saket has an excellent description  of it borrowing heavily from Seth Godin. In my view, the term CAT blogs is a bit derogatory because it seems to convey the impression that someone’s observations/incidents from their own lives are not interesting. A case in point is Sherry’s Blog – as she eloquently writes – a mosaic made from fragements of daily experience. A cat blog of this type can make for a genuinely interesting read. My recommendation would be to call these Journal Blogs which is more appropriate. Boss Blogs are a very
useful tool for communicating with a specific group – for example, see Kris Bordesssa and Ferrellweb. The third category – Viral Blogs also known as Topical Blogs – probably will account for the majority of the blogs out there. Maintaining a Journal Blog can be a bit difficult as it requires a certain amount of flair for writing. You may want to try this form, if you are used to maintaining a paper journal or have other experience with writing. If you want to experiment with Blogging – Viral Blogs may be the best bet. As you observe or read about things that interest you, you can write a few lines about that. Prevalent opinion (although I don’t completely agree with it) is to focus your blog on one key topic and keep blogging on that topic alone.
2. Why should you blog?
Terrance is right, every single blogger that you encounter would say that they blog because they get motivated by the comments they receive from readers. Citing personal experience, its important at least in the initial days to have a few readers who will read your posts and give you some encouragement. I have been blogging for over 1.5 years now and I will not have continued but for the initial encouragement I received from Wingees to whom this blog is dedicated. Borrowing from management theory – there are always extrinsic motivators and intrinsic motivators. Extrinsic motivators in this case are reader’s comments, receiving links from other bloggers, becoming recognized as a A-list blogger etc. As Selva says, if you are looking for extrinsic motivators blogging may become a bumpy ride. Remember there are over 21 million blogs and no one may have the time to read your blog. If you really want to be a blogger, you may want to focus on intrinsic motivators. Some of them are – just the pure thrill of seeing your thoughts in a post as Saket puts it, or exercising your creative muscles like Dean. In my case, I see blogging as having some type of therapeutic value – in that I can just publish some of my ideas and get them out of my head. Aside from this, if you are a really good blogger, you will gain some visibility and may help you in my career. You will also observe that because the Mainstream Media (MSM) is editorially controlled, it takes time for some ideas to be covered by the MSM and usually the Blogosphere has covered something way ahead of the MSM. In my personal experience, I have learnt so much about technology, management, human behaviour, politics etc from the Blogosphere. I have even been able to apply some of the ideas in my line of work some of which will appear in the MSM probably a year or two later. This in my opinion is the biggest single benefit of being a blogger. Of course, you could receive some of these benefits if you just read blogs, but being a blogger makes you a better hunter of ideas as Dina explains. 3. What do you blog about?
At the core of it, the Blogosphere is one giant group discussion about the world. Like in any group discussion, the best discussions happen, when each participant is listening to the others, building upon each other’s ideas and moving the discussion forward. And for that to happen, you should have a perspective on what is being discussed. By that analogy, you should read other bloggers and just react to what they are saying and share your perspective on that subject. Don’t be afraid to share your honest opinion. Over a period of time, you will be able to start some threads that other bloggers react to. You must read a lot either online or offline – I am sure you read several books, movies, listen to music, travel to places, meet new people all the time. Each of those experiences can give you the seed from which a blog post can sprout. Or as Joe Kissell says, get a smart  spouse and brainstorm with him/her. This is a very effective technique – witness the number of posts on this blog I ascribe to my brilliant wife – Priya Raju. 4. How do you avoid the “Blogger’s Block”?
If you are talented like Sherry you may never suffer from it. But its typical for bloggers to experience a seeming inability to blog about anything for periods of time. If you do hit such a spot, don’t sweat it. Take a break, do something interesting and you will get your groove back. There is also a school of thought that encourages you to write what are known as “filler” posts. In my opinion, in the age of RSS that may not be necessary. If your readers are subscribing to your feeds, they will get a feed next time you write anyway. Its not like they are going to unsubscribe as soon as there is a short period of silence. If you are silent for extended periods of time, that may happen. By writing “filler” posts you are just filling up
valuable real estate in the Blogosphere, so it may be wise to not do it. Dean’s guerilla tactics may come in handy to overcome Blogger’s Block. 5. If you are like me, I have the exact opposite of “Blogger’s
Block” – the blogging equivalent of verbal diarrhoea. I have so many thoughts about so many different interesting posts that others have written, that I am perennially backlogged on what I
want to post about. One method I have started experimenting with recently is maintaining a Link Blog. I use Yahoo Web 2.0 and any time I see something interesting, which is quite a lot, I just bookmark it with public access and it appears in the Link Blog (small panel on the right hand frame of this blog). This has helped me a lot in keeping my backlog to the extremely interesting ones which I want to truly write a few lines about. Hope this is useful. I do intend to summarize the ideas we have seen on the blog marketing front after a few more runs of this series. References:
1. Tim Bray’s Top 10 reasons why blogging is good for your career. 2. Blogging is good for your brain by Drs. Fernette and Brock Eide (Via Jollyblogger).

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