I loved OneNote; and now One Note is free!

Wow! OneNote is one of my favorite pieces of software. It is now free from Microsoft - see http://www.onenote.com for details. And better yet, there are a lot of apps featured as well at http://www.onenote.com/apps.

A minute of pause here: why do I like OneNote? Why would I want to share more information?

I like OneNote, because it is simple and easy to use. It has powerful search functionality. It connects well on the internet and enables shared notebook access. I can house my notebook on the internet and reconnect to it from any machine. BEST of all, I do not have to keep pressing 'save button' anytime. And of course it rarely crashes. OneNote to me is the best piece of software that tells me more about what a 21st century software can be.

Certainly OneNote is not a panacea for all problems I have :) There are many features I desire that it makes it easy for me
a) Scan documents - coming soon. I need to try the Office Lens with OneNote.
b) Write blogs - I have not find the magic connector for me to use OneNote and have a copy of the messages posted as blog to my favorite blog site
c) Auto-compressor - often I get OneNote notebooks from others that are big and long. I would like to see a compressor that do its magic to show me the relevant parts, to reduce the time it takes to wade thru all details
d) Separate note creation from note walk through. Again to consume other's post it is useful to separate what is the input detail from the output detail.
e) Heatmap of the content in OneNote, so I can manage out old notes. Often it is easy to accumulate turds and I do not go back and clean up old notes. Having a heat map can help me to weed thru the old stuff that is not relevant
f) An integrated change log that can show me changes to various Notebooks that I am connected with (one can turn this into a form of feed engine)
etc.

There are plenty of app opportunities atop OneNote. For now it is great that this is free that more users can enjoy. Nice!

Values to guide in Project Leadership

In the past two decades of professional employment in the software industry, I had learnt a lot from working on various projects (mostly software projects in teams). I  hold three values and continued to invest in these: Innovation, Collaboration, and Execution. Besides the project related values, I also hold high regard for some personal values: Integrity, Honesty, and Initiative. Finally, I like people values of: Trust, Respect, and Appreciation. Today I will discuss just the values related to projects.

Briefly the project values are:

•  Innovation - bringing new ideas to life - both on problem solving and process engineering to create product value. Innovation does not mean just a big bang effort like creating the next big electronic gadget or building the next big software development tool, though those are the things that I help with. Also there are numerous occasions where small innovations are very useful as well. 
•  Collaboration - working with people cross boundaries and cross-teams to solve problems. Bringing ideas to life is a big task. Attempting to doing it alone is not easy and sometimes can be just plain boring. Instead working with teams can be fun and rewarding experience. And for this collaboration to work, it is important to listen, communicate, clarify, and engage in joint sessions to solve problems.
•  Execution - is the art and science of completing the project on time and on budget. No idea has value unless it has been shaped and delivered for users to experience it. Execution includes rigorous focus on nuts and bolts details to ensure all parts of the project progress well. The 99% perspiration happens here: budget and tracking schedules, fixing bugs iterations, testing, etc.

Most times, I value the Innovation, Collaboration, and Execution on an even keel. On occasions, I modify the order in which I want to exercise these values depending on the type of project I am working on. Most times it is clarifying the teams I work with. Though some people may find it hard to adjust when we change the project and accordingly I update the values. In those occasions I resort to repeat education within the team about the rationale.

For instance, over the past year, I was doing a startup project to develop a novel set of ideas to market that had the potential to change our business moving forward. The effort required a lot of focus on shaping the new ideas and refining it deeply. For this project the order I used was: Innovation, Collaboration, and Execution. Accordingly, we spent the first part of project schedule prototyping and defining the architecture. I formed teams and updated the teams 4 months later once we learnt more. I also found parts that I can borrow and reuse from elsewhere - hence I applied the collaboration aspects to discuss and leverage others solutions. The team also produced parts that are to be used by others; we delivered collaboratively to others. About half way thru the project I started emphasizing the Execution aspects more. Accordingly I focused the team on reduced times to deploy and test our software, improve customer feedback, fix bugs and reach zero bug bounce, etc. Net-net, the values did not change, the order helped us focus the efforts.

Three years back, I was asked to develop Windows Phone Application Store. There were several app stores in the market by 2010. So novelty was not high, but getting the store services out was definitely very important. And there was strong possibility to create small innovations along the way. The order I used was: Execution, Collaboration, and Innovation. Focusing on execution to build up a high quality app store with rapid progress to get the store for windows phones was critical. Certainly there were many teams to work with to reuse technology from. The team adopted collaboration as next step. Finally we found new ways to do things and new features (ex: build on Windows Azure, optimize app package for faster load, Personalized search for apps, etc.) with our focus on innovation. Net-net, I led three versions of the app store development using the same value priorities and helped us get the app store up and running well.

I had learnt that having a few values that I repeatedly use helps me focus in my work and lead the teams. I appreciate the guidance I received from many leaders I worked with for guiding me to develop and refine my values.

Stock Returns 1928-2013

Today I got to review the historical data for financial returns for various commonly used indices: S&P 500, 3-month bills and 10-year T-bonds. Thanks to data/analysis from @AswathDamodaran, we can easily look at this situation. See data at http://people.stern.nyu.edu/adamodar/pc/datasets/histretSP.xls

$100 invested in 1928 in various instruments would have grown as show in the chart below. Everyone ones that the stocks suffered a big setback in 1929-1933 which almost reduced the total stock value to nearly 10% of the original amount. And it took almost till 1936 to get back to original place only to fall again to reach back value in 1944. Starting n 1955, the stocks had a great continuous run up … perhaps tracking the post-world war 2 generation.

Recent performances in S&P 500 are noteworthy and cyclic. The stocks raised to great peaks in 1999, 2008, and are still raising now in 2014. Each time the stocks seem to reach new heights defying expectations from many folks. Plainly looking at the graphs it seems that the cycle frequencies are increasing with the time spent in the downtime also decreasing. Is that an indication of continuous optimism or constant shifting in S&P 500 mix? I do not know. Nonetheless, it is fascinating to see that stock returns significantly outpaced the short and long term bond investing. It almost seems that we are encouraged to take risks! And let us do that with eyes wide open.

Again thanks to Aswath Damodaran for data. I am going to learn more from him in the coming days.

 

Is there an easy meaningful measure for quality of education?

Today I read a fascinating article from Education Next talking about Quality Counts and Chances for Success Indicators (CFSI). The article started out discussing the challenges in measuring success in education, especially being consistent across the United States. With increasing pressure and interest from various groups, no doubt, there is a lot of interest to have a nation wide comparison model. And the CFSI based rankings suggested in the article are reasonable ones.

I particularly like their measures that are not a single number (for example: % high school graduates). Instead they use a basket of 13 indicators ranging from parental income to steady workforce employment. Despite these indicators that bring in regular inputs to the index every year, I was left with this question about what can be meaningful and easy.

First we need to understand that definition of success varies highly. Tech industry is filled with numerous examples of college drop outs who went on to succeed significantly in business (Steve Jobs of Apple, Bill Gates of Microsoft, Jan Koum of WhatsApp). And I know of several top class graduates from top standing universities work hard at making others businesses succeed.

Second we know that there is a lot of diversity from city to city, school to school, let alone state to state. So any measure that uses state wide metrics is challenging to compare directly for ranking purposes. I am naïve to all sorts of interesting statistical methods. Perhaps there is a solution in statistics. Still I am not sure how one can control for regional difference in cost of living, earning levels, etc. As Malcolm Gladwell will explain in David & Goliath: Underdogs, misfits, and the art of battling the giants, there are a few examples where seemingly inadequate education still can produce wonderful people who succeed in life.

Perhaps we will never agree on a single measure. What may be universally true is that an indivudal who strives consistently will go on to succeed in his/her chosen endeavor. As Thomas Edition famously said "Success is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration".

Universal Wish List Button (on Amazon)

Wow, today I learnt about this Universal Wish List button for hte browsers. Amazon has always been great at engaging users to purchase products. A few years back when i discovered that i can add items to the wish list, I was surprised about why they would allow me to add items to the wish list. Subsequently over the years, I learnt that the wish list became the hook for me to go back and purchase more.

Today I discovered this Universal Wish List button. I need to see how this works out. Perhaps my wish list will get flooded more. and I have to wait for the universal funding agency to help me get the wish list items. Nonetheless, the button is simple and cool. Nice work.
 

Introduction to Elements - fun and educative

When I grew up, I was amazed at variety and details about the Chemical elements. I hardly had visualized a few of the elements and more often it was a chore before Chemistry labs to understand more. Not anymore. David Pogue presents a fun and educative program http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/physics/hunting-elements.html to tell us more about elements. Chemistry was different right after I watched this program.

He interviews Theodore Gray who has done a fantastic job of writing excellent book to help us visualize elements. And together they show some experiments which is also great. Definitely a video worth watching multiple times.

Making Stuff - Wilder, Colder, Faster, Safer .. David Pogue rocks!

A few days back we accidentally stumbled on some exciting videos with David Pogue as the narrator. We watched David Pogue's "Making stuff wilder", which is part of a NOVA series.
See http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/making-more-stuff.html. David is a great narrator. He also does a fantastic job of traveling to various places and stitching together an excellent video series.

I got to learn about swarms of robots, incredibly big bull like robots, sensitive and strong clothing materials, etc. It is incredible to see how the world has evolved significantly and how science plays a key role in advancing the civilization. Definitely a great watching experience.