ok one thing i found

that i like about NYC is that i do not have to worry about driving every day. Of course most of the time i hate that i cannot own a car and drive up I5 or 405, but then the everyday thing is somewhat nice. Like today, there is so much snow, suburb roads are mess, but i do not care. I will go home at my usual time by my usual train. kind of nice, especially after driving nightmare in seattle snow. At the same time NY style, I will have to walk for 10 min in super cold weather, and have to stand for another 20 min in dirty crowded train and go back to that silly small apartment with no carpet.

Interesting blog to watch

http://www.winesofeast.com/

The Indian wines.

Intelligence vs Hard work

A very eye opening article
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-secret-to-raising-smart-kids&print=true

bdays - still happy?

When do birthdays stop being happy? at 25, 28, 30, 40, 60, never? I can see myself at 18, being happy that I turned 18, though being in India and at school, it did not mean much at that time. I can totally imagine Shayon being extremely happy at his 21st (is it already over), finally he can go to Indian Ocean concerts he has been missing for years. I am kind of happy at 25 too, don't need to pay extra for car insurance anymore! But can you feel the same at 40, oh great! I turned 40. Well, what is so happy about it, other than now you can use the "age defying" makeup, "wrinkle protection" cream and maybe put away your backpacking gear for good. I guess you could be happy to be still alive in this brutal world, and if you are in that position, could be happy about still holding on to good friends, or having a successful career behind you. Still, at 60 when someone says Happy B'day, doesn't one feel like replying, ya, very happy, its beginning of the end, thanks for reminding me! We should pass a law that after 30 you are not allowed to wish anyone happy birthday, that day does not mean anything, its like a normal day of year, and not a reminder of life passing by. I am sure we can find plenty of days to celebrate, except this one reminder of aging process.

Google @ GHC

Grace Hopper Conference 2007 was a great success, and Google had a great presence at the conference. There were almost 50 Googlers at the conference and more than 60 scholarship winners sponsored by Google. I actually met a couple of students flown in all the way from India to Florida to attend the conference. Wherever you go, you could see women dressed in their Google t-shirts. Lot of women from other companies remarked that there were lot of Googlers at the conference, and were surprised to hear that there was no selection process to attend the conference, anyone who wanted to attend could. The Google booth was crowded as usual, recruiters and engineers equally busy taking resumes, talking to potential candidates. On the last day the lines for getting Google t-shirts were really long, and we had t-shirts for everyone. The Google blinky pin was equally popular too.
... more details coming soon!

Getting the big idea

Innovation today is the key to most successes. Think Apple, think Google, think Post-it, they all innovated. This talk though started with examples of not 'real' innovations, but re-innovations, where people took existing ideas, refined them and brought them to public in a revolutionary way. Her examples of apple's mouse, iPod wheel and snow board were surprise to me.
She then moved on to actual strategies to get that idea.
First thing she told was look at competitors, see what they are not good at and leverage that!
Strength, Opportunities, Weakness, Threats is the map to fill.
Look at customers, why do they yell at your customer service. Talk to non-customers. Its relief to know that Google really does that. We as engineers of teams are very much encouraged to closely work with customer support.
Current customer pain, customer losses, new needs, competitive pressure are the things to look for to identify a opportunity.
Identify early influencers who know what can improve a average product and make it great. She gave example of this guy who converted his webcam mounted on rails around the house and he wanted it to move up, down etc. Gave logitech the idea.
"Influencers blog !!!" and they are also slightly wacky, but they have that new idea. You need to go find them and talk to them.
Innovation does not happen when you are going 100 miles an hour. You need reserve, make some white space, keep reserve for thinking.
This was a really good, useful and engaging talk. I am glad I stayed for this session while more people have left. GHC needs to advertise these session more to get people to stay on!

Session 4: Agents of Change

यह पैनल इस साल की ३ अगेंट्स ऑफ़ चंगे महिलाओं का था। इजिप्ट, बहरीन और रूस की इन महिलाओं ने अपने अपने देश की महिलाओं कि मुश्किलें बताई। यह तीनों देश कुछ अलग हैं। बहरीन कड़ी देश है, और अमीर है। मुझे यह जान कर ताज्जुब हुआ कि वहाँ पर महिलाओं का घर से बाहर काम करना आम बात है। ज़्यादातर महिलाऐं आत्मनिर्भर हैं। पर वहाँ तकनीकी क्षेत्र में लोग कम हैं। इसलिए महिलाओं को भी इस क्षेत्र के लिए उत्साहित करना मुश्किल है। इजिप्ट और रूस में लगभग समान दिक्कतें हैं। समाज में महिलाएं घर पर ही रहती हैं। उन पर सदियों पुरानी घर और बच्चों कि ज़िम्मेदारी है।

Session 3 - Latinas in technology

This session requires a special mention. I just chanced upon this session because I did not feel like going anywhere else, and I was going to attend a session in the same room next. And that was one of the best chances I have taken. This was one of the best sessions I heard. One of my aim for this conference was to understand what does it really take to rise in industry. I heard a lot about you need mentor, you need blah blah. But in this session the penalists actually gave a direct How To list on how to get this done. They were so direct, straight forward that its not a bed of roses. You need to work hard, you need to play it smart, you need to manipulate, and that is how you get it done. It was amazing hearing them talk, as if they are talking direct 1:1 to every audiance what she needs to do. It was also great to see the sense of community among latinas, they share the same background, same problems, which are I guess no different from Indians, or any other community. I am feeling totally inspired to start a network for Indians.

Session 2 - How to retain इन high-tech

यह शायद इस सम्मेलन का सबसे मुख्य विषय है। हर जगह आज-कल यही बात चल रही है, कि किस तरह से तकनीकी क्षेत्र में महिलाओं को आगे बढ़ने में मदद कि जाये। मेरे लिए अभी तक यह सवाल है कि क्यों हम आगे नहीं बढ़ पते। भारत में भी जहाँ कंप्यूटर में महिलाओं कि अच्छी संख्या है, हम आ तो जाते हैं, पर बहूत आगे नहीं बढ़ पते। सवाल यह भी है कि क्या सही में वातावरण को बदलने कि ज़रूरत है, या हमें अपने आप को बदलने कि ज़रूरत है। हमें अपना नज़रिया बदलने कि ज़रूरत है। इस टॉक में एक परीक्षण का नतीज़ा दिखाया गया। एक सबसे बड़ा मुद्दा था mentor का, एक गुरु जो तुम्हारे लिए बोल सके। पर क्या पुरुषों के लिए गुरु होते हैं, या उनको ज़रूरत ही नहीं होती। टॉक में कुछ नया तो नहीं था, वही सब मुद्दे, वही बातें.


This is probably one of the main topics of this conference. How to retain and advance women in high-tech companies. These days everywhere people are talking about this, how to help women move forward. I also have this big question, why are we not able to move forward. Even in India where there are larger number of women in computers, we enter, but then we are left much behind other make co-workers in corporate ladder. The question is also if its the environment which needs to change or do we need to change ourselves, our nature and the way we look and do things.In this talk, the speaker showed findings of a study about this.

Session 1 - Making web accessible for people with disabilities

आज का दिन तकनीकी विषयों के लिए है। सबसे पहले हम देखेंगे -
विक्लांग लोगों के लिए वेब पन्ने कैसे बनायें
सबसे पहले स्पीकर ने एक पन्ने को स्वतः पढ़ने वाला सोफ्टवेयर दिखाया। और फिर कुछ और अंधे, बहरे या विक्लंग लोगों को नयी तकनीक कि मदद से कंप्यूटर इस्तेमाल करते हुए दिखाया। सबसे पहले पन्ने के चित्रों पर ध्यान देना चाहिऐ। जो लोग स्वतः रीडर इस्तेमाल करते हैं, चित्र नहीं देख सकते। उनके लिए चित्र कि जगह शब्दों में भी उसको बताना ज़रूरी है।



Today is for technical talks। We will first see how to make web pages for people with दिसाबिलितिएस She started with showing a screen reader which blind people can use to read web pages। Then she showed some more examples of blind, deaf or otherwise disabled people can use computers with the help of modern technology।
alt text of a image
proper html mark up of the headers so that readers can skip through headers properly.
small things like using proper lists instead of table when makes sense again makes it easier for readers.
link text are required for the readers so that they can read up what the link will lead to.
colour contrast, text size etc.
Then she went on to tell about the different guidelines, acts available for accessibility of websites. There is WCAG, Section 508 etc., can be easily googled. Dynamic content calls for more work on these guidelines (WAI-ARIA is a start).
This was a really informative talk. She gave specific tips on things that we all can easily do in html. Then she went on to give more details on how to deep dive into details. We all are grouped here as one of the minority group in computer science. People with disability is another minority group which has always been discriminated against when we with previledges design things. We as carriers of technology and the group which understands the pain and frustration of being denied access, can take great steps to make web accessible to this group with disabilities. The speaker is really compassionate about the topic, and it was great to hear her.
* Give your mouse to the cat, can you navigate your site?
* Turn off images, can you make sense of the page?

Session 5 - RFID

radio frequency identification
यह एक तकनीकी बात थी। स्पीकर ने किताब घर के उदाहरण से शुरुआत की। हर किताब या कोई भी चीज़ पर एक लेबल लगा सकते हैं। इस लेबल में एक चिप होती है, जिसका अलग चिन्ह होता है। यह लेबल पढ़ने के लिए रीडर मशीन कि ज़रूरत होती है। मशीन अपना डाटा एक सर्वर को भेजती है। स्पीकर काफी अच्छी थी। इस टॉक से पहले मुझे इस तकनीक के बारे में कुछ भी नहीं पता था। स्पीकर ने शुरू से समझाया, टॉक में कभी भी यह नहीं लगा की क्या बात कर रहे हैं, समझ नहीं आ रहा।
पूरा दिन लोगों से बात करने, ज़िंदगी कि सलाह लेने, दूसरों की मुश्किलें सुनने के बाद एक तकनीकी विषय पर चर्चा करना बहूत अच्छा लगा। भविष्य कि गोष्ठियों में इस तरह की चर्चा ज़रूर होनी चाहिऐ। एक गोष्ठी जो कि तकनीकी महिलों के लिए है, यह लोगों कि रूचि बनाए रखता है।

The speaker started with a book store example. Every product has a RFID tag, tags are read by the readers which have limited range। There is of course a server which consolidates info from various readers and analyzes them।

Speaker was really good. RFID is not rocket science, but then I can in with no experience other than knowing how to expand the acronym. She started with RFID 101 for us who had no idea. After a day of networking, talking, career advice, listening to a tech talk was a really good changes. After all we are all women in technology and at end of the day we need the feeling that we 'learnt' something technical today :).

रंगीन त्वचा कि महिलों के साथ भोजन

आज दोपहर के खाने का विषय था रंग की महिलाएं। इसमें अफ्रीकी, अफ्रीकी अमरीकी, लातिन और एशिया की कुछ महिलाओं ने भाग लिया। शुरुआत काफी रुचिकर थी। हम सब ने अपने आप को पहले रहन- स्थान के आधार पर बँटा। उसके बाद अपने क्षेत्र के आधार पर बँटा। और अंत में किस तरह से हम अपने आप के बारे में सोचते हैं उस आधार पर। इस समय सभी अपने आप को जहाँ से आये हैं उस आधार पर बँटा। मैं भारत मूल की महिलों के साथ थी। खाने के दौरान हमने अपनी भविष्य योजना और वहाँ पहुचने के लिए क्या मदद चाहिऐ इस बारे में बात की। विषय अच्छा था, और खाना सफल रह।

The topic for today's lunch was networking with women of colour. It started with a interesting exercise where we picked sides on what represents us, e.g. women in industry vs academia, software vs hardware etc. In the end we grouped ourselves based on adjectives we identify ourselves with. No surprise there, the groups were based on race, indian sub-continent, african american, latinos, african and hungry (not the country). Then we sat down for a delicious lunch. During lunch we talked about what we want to do and what help do we need to get there. This was a opportunity to network.

session 3 - Using technology to empower women in developing world

प्रगतिशील देशों में।
सिन्द्रेल्ला या सायेब्रेल्ल - सिन्द्रेल्ला बैठ कर अपने राजकुमार का इंतज़ार करती है जबकि सायेब्रेल्ल खुद अपनी ज़िंदगी बनाती है। इस सम्मेलन में शायद ही कोई सिन्द्रेल्ला मिलेगी। लेकिन सवाल यह है कि क्या हम अपनी कम भाग्यशाली बहनों के लिए कुछ कर सकते हैं? क्या हम विज्ञानं और तकनीक की मदद से उनके हाथ में शक्ति दे सकते हैं। भारत और दुसरे देशों में सायबर कैफे जैसे सामाजिक केन्द्र हैं जहाँ पर महिलाएँ इस प्रगति का फायदा उठा सकती हैं। चिकित्सा एक ऐसा छेत्र है जिसमें इंटरनेट जैसी तकनीक का इस्तेमाल करके शहरों के बडे हस्पतालों के विशेषज्ञों को गावों के छोटे छोटे हस्पतालों से जोड़ने कि कोशिश जारी है। सिधू ने यह सवाल उठाया कि क्यों भारत में इतने सारे छोटे छोटे प्रोजेक्ट हैं, लेकिन उनमे से कोई भी सफलता के साथ बडे स्तर पर लागू नहीं किया गया है। इस पैनल में सिस्को, इंटेल जैसी कंपनियों ने अपने प्रोजेक्ट के बारे में बताया।

Session १ - work and life balance.

ज़िंदगी और काम का संतुलन।

यह एक सवाल हम सब के दिमाग में रहता है। खासकर कि महिलाओं के। आज भी समाज में यह धरना है कि घर और बच्चों कि देखभाल महिलाएं ही कर सकती हैं। ऐसे में कैसे महिलाएं अपने घर और दफ्तर कि ज़िंदगी का संतुलन बनायें।

इस पैनल में ३ महिलाओं ने अपनी ज़िंदगी कि कहानी सुने। तीनों कि ज़िंदगी कि शुरुआत अलग थीं, लेकिन तीनों ने अपने आत्मविश्वास से ज़िंदगी में सफलता पा ली। Robin ने कुछ बहुत ही अच्छी बातें बोली। उसने कहा कि अपनी ज़िंदगी को अपने हाथ में लो, ज़िंदगी के फैसले खुद करो, और फिर उन फैसलों पर अमल करो। अपने आप से ईमानदारी भी बहुत ज़रूरी है।

ससिलिया ने हवाई जहाज उड़ने के क्षेत्र में अपना करिश्मा दिखाया। यह एक बहूत ही मुश्किल है महिलाओं के लिए। पर उसने कर दिखाया अगर फैला कर लो, और आत्मविश्वास हो तो महिलाएं कुछ भी कर सकती हैं। पैनल अच्छा था। सवाल वही पुराना था, लेकिन तीनों की zindagi se हम सब कुछ सीख सकते हैं। एक कि हम अकेले नहीं हैं। बहूत महिलाएं आज इन मुश्किलों से जूझ रही हैं। और बहूत सफलता से उन्हें पार कर चुकी हैं। आज समाज भी कुछ बदल रह है। और फिर आख़िर में अपनी ज़िंदगी, अपनी सफलता अपने हाथ में है। और हमें बिना डर के आगे बढ़ कर उसको हासिल करना चाहिऐ।

Work life balance.

This is one question which is always in minds of everyone। Especially the women। Even today society thinks that only women can take care of hou se and children. In such circumstances how do women keep the work and life balance.

In this panel, there were 3 women who told their life story. All three had different beginning in life, but they all achieved great success with their self-confidence. Robin made some really good points. She said, we need to take our life in our own hands, we need to make our own decisions, and once decided, stand by these decisions. Honesty with self is also very important in life.

Cecilia made her career in aeronautic acrobatics. This is a really male dominated field. Its really difficult for women to succeed here. She showed that if you decide, and if you have self-confidence, you can do anything.

ब्लोग्गिंग grace hopper conference के लिए

तो अक्तूबर में मैं Grace Hopper Conference के लिए जा रही हूँ। और मुझे कोन्फेरेंस के लिए ब्लोग्गिंग करना है और वोह भी हिंदी में. मुझे पता नहीं कि उनको हिंदी में ब्लोग क्यों चाहिऐ, पर मेरे लिए यह एक नया challenge होगा। मेरा पहला ब्लोग जो कि किसी दुसरे कि सीते पर होगा, और काफी लोग उसको पढेंगे, और ऊपर से हिंदी में लिखना होगा। यह अभी भी कितना मुश्किल है, अपनी ही भाषा में लिखना। में सोच रही हूँ कि इसी ब्लोग पर लिखूं, और अंग्रेजी और हिंदी दोनो में लिखूं। आख़िर कितने लोग हिंदी जानते होंगे, और उसमें से कितने अपने कंप्यूटर पर हिंदी पढ़ सकते हिंगो, और फिर शायद मेरे लिए भी आसान होगा पहले अंग्रेजी और फिर हिंदी में लिखना, कितने शर्म कि बात है।

alight, so i have been chosen as official blogger for the Grace Hopper Conference, and guess what I have to write in Hindi. Its going to be interesting, my first official blog and that too in Hindi. I am planning to use this same blog for the posts and write it in both Hindi and english. Afterall, how many people can read Hindi and of that how many will actually be able to read it on their computers, and then for me its going to be easier too ;)

relaxing

T: I really need to relax this weekend, its been so busy at work.
X: ya, I am thinking the same, a very relaxing weekend.
T: I am planning to go for this small 2 day backpack in the Breakneck area, I heard there is a great 2500ft hike, good views.
X: a...., um......, I thought......

hee hee, well, so that happens. How do you relax. When in Seattle, I actually never though relaxing is somthing that you can do on a weekend. Weekends were for fun, go out enjoy. They were usually more hectic and by Thursday I used to be worried how to have more fun this weekend, and did I mention fun. Here the story is totally different. Weekdays are so damn hectic and frustration and stressful that you need to just get away from this mess. I used to hear people say, New Yorkers like to go away on weekends so they leave office early on Friday. And I as like, well if you are going away on weekend, don't you need to stay longer on Friday to finsh work, and what does 'going away' mean anyway. So it was not going away from office, it was going away from the city and the crowd and that means driving through bizarre traffic and spend 5 super stressful hours to go about 100 miles. And now I can see (not that I would ever ever consider myself even remotely a 'New Yorker', and I will probably never speak to you if you called me one), but I can see why you really need to get away. This place just drives you crazy and its so much of craziness that one person can take. So now weekends are for relaxing and relaxing means going away from this place, so far away that you forget you live in hell :).

5K run for the cure

This weekend I did a 5K (3.5 miles) at central park, race for cure (of breast cancer). The race had a huge turnaround. I was quite confident that I will make it, thanks to the Seattle marathon run, and I did. I can't say without breaking a sweat, my t-shirt was drenched! But that was from hot weather. It was amazing to see myself sail through it, and later ready to get going without 30 min of rest and bottle of vitamin water! I have got to keep it up!

Bear Mountain Hike

ok, so finally Bear mountain. Its probably one of the closest hiking trail picnic spot to NYC and accessible by bus. So this weekend we decided to go for the hike. This was a total grab stuff and go hike, no planning, no maps nothing. Once there, first we were little surprised by the area of this place, there is a small lake and picnic spots round it, and there is also large area for more picnic all around. There was absolutely no sign of trail head. Then we spotted someone with hiking poles, kind of ob she was here for hike. Asked her about trils, she showed her map, told about few trails she did, and told about the trail we were looking for, steep hike up to the tower and back in a loop. Then rahul brought some maps from somewhere, and we started applying budhhi and decided on a 6.5 mile trail. The trail head was somewhere hidden between highways, to get to the trail head, we had to cross a bunch of freeways, very adventurous. Somehow we managed to find the trailhead and it was immediately evident that its mostly an abandoned trail. Like most of the trails here, there were good signs to guide, but it was not a maintained trail from Seattle standards. So anyway, we started, it was more like a jungle walk and that made me nervous immediately. Then after a while we started hearing traffic noise and realized that the whole trail is close to the highway, we were never away from sound of the cars which was in a way comforting, but then not what I was looking for. I was quite frustrated for a while, wasting time on walking. Then we reached this junction which seemed to be leading to the Applacian trail. The trail map showed that if we took the diversion, it will take us directly to the tower and back.
Decision point, we had about 3 hours before the last bus back, and no idea how long the trail would be, and its suppose to be a steep hike up and steep down, meaning slow both ways. Somehow we decided to take it. More apprehension. Then we met someone who said yes its far, but its good. Ok, move on. The trail immediately climbed few hundred feet and we were at a good open spot with good view, exactly what I was looking for. Then we hit a paved road and lost the white AT trail marker we were following. Met a few more lost people, looking for the tower. We kept walking, more apprehension about missing the bus, and then finally found the trail again. Later I realized that we had taken a bike path shortcut to cut across the hill and meet the trail which we were suppose to take to go back. Anyway, we headed up, it was a steep climb, but view from the top was worth it all. The top of tower is accessible by car also, so it was very crowded. We sat, had lunch, enjoyed the view, took photos and then started back. The hike back was ok, reached in comfortable time. Must have covered a total of 8 miles or more, and good thing is we hit almost every trail in the area in our little adventure. We still had almost an hour to spare before the bus, spent sitting by the lake and of course dunking feet in the water.

Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix

ah, fianlly watched the movie :) It was a good surprise, after last movie I did not have big expectations from this one. The last director just did not seem to understand the essence of the book and had totally messed up Dumbledore's character. But this one was much better, Umbridge who is sort of the main character here (apart from the kids) has acted well. But as usual for me, snape just steals the show all the time, he is simply the best! Though he has a very small part in this movie, but his just 2 words ("no idea") are amazingly snapily delivered. One point they totally missed in the movie is that he is part of the order, and whatever Harry mumbles to him in Umbridge's office is the message Snape took to the Order and that's how they finally appeared at ministry of magic. Of course with the fast pace of the book it was probably hard to notice. And this movie also had a really sad ending, Black is dead!

Heroes

This TV series by NBC deserves a special mention on the blog :). The first time I heard about it was when some people started a fan club in office. Honestly at that time I thought that its probably some freaky american violent show, maybe full of some stupid scifi theories given that engg were so much interested in it, sort of like the horror movies here. Then suddenly few days back Rahul brought it up and I started to watch the first episode. And then suddenly I see this south Indian guy with that typical acquired english accent saying something and some Indian music in background and then sanskrit shloks started in the background. That totally got me hooked, so its got to do something with Indians! But well, its not, though there is lot of Indian music in background and scenes of chennai, where Indian talk in the same irritating acquired english accent and a street boy who looks like never been to school also speaks flawless english!. Well crapy direction and acting aside, the series is really good. The whole thing is based on theory that random DNA mutations cause some people to get some special powers, and the Indian scientist is working on them trying to find a cause, a cure etc. And there are couple of very cute Japanese guys who can do time travel and keep jumping all over the place. And of course everyone else is American and they are trying to blow up New York. I found it quite ironic that a Japanese guys is giving up his live, trying desperately to save a nuclear bomb from exploding in New York. In all this series totally got us hooked!