Recently, I came across a TED talk on storytelling1 and I forwarded the link to my friend. His response to that was in the form of a question, “Bala, why do you like stories?” This post is a reply to his question describing the reason I like stories. I won’t disappoint you, I do have a story in there…
From the moment the lockdown was announced in the country (as they did in many other countries), most of us have been working from home, doing balancing acts between work, home, grocery shopping and taking care of kids’ needs. Dr. Shankar gave me a call and proposed that we don’t take this one lying down, but taking it chin up. Hence, we worked on applying TRIZ on the situation of people like us, who are in similar situations.
The art of framing a problem in the form of a contradiction (or a conflict of interest) is the core of the methodology of ARIZ (from the toolkit of TRIZ). Often times, the people whom I work with (be it students or employees) have a problem with understanding the concept. This series of posts is meant to clarify this for them. I have decided to use specific movie scenes for the purpose. I draw this idea heavily from a friend of mine (https://trizindia.org/2009/09/triz-in-films-ideas-for-fooling-filmi-ghost/). Today, we are going to use a scene from the movie “Dangal”.
Welcome to the Books and Stuff Podcast Series.
Books and Stuff Podcast series - How to get rid of the habit of staring at the screen for every idle second of the day? Simple, follow a digital diet. Listen to Krishna’s experiences of a 7 day digital diet. Can anybody learn anything from Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert? Are you serious? Krishna seems to think so. We will listen to Krishna’s formula for happiness or atleast how to increase probability of happiness. This is a LOGO podcast - Listen to One Get One
Enjoy the Books and Stuff Podcast!
Welcome to the Books and Stuff Podcast Series.
Books and Stuff Podcast series - Bala dares to read a sci-fi book on his own and talk about it to Krishna. The tables have turned and Krishna watches the fun and asks Bala to summarize the book. What if a giant spaceship was sent to the earth with advanced technology? How will humanity respond to that? Will be treated as a purely scientific venture or a military mission to protect the sovereignty of the earth? “Rendezvous with Rama” deals with the theme of uniting under an external threat. Explore the vast and massive world that the Ramans had built to be sent out to the nook and corners of the universe.
Enjoy the Books and Stuff Podcast!
The art of framing a problem in the form of a contradiction (or a conflict of interest) is the core of the methodology of ARIZ (from the toolkit of TRIZ). Often times, the people whom I work with (be it students or employees) have a problem with understanding the concept. This series of posts is meant to clarify this for them. I have decided to use specific movie scenes for the purpose. I draw this idea heavily from a friend of mine (https://trizindia.org/2009/09/triz-in-films-ideas-for-fooling-filmi-ghost/). Today, we are going to use a scene from the movie “The Matrix”.
Welcome to the Books and Stuff Podcast Series.
Books and Stuff Podcast series - Are you sure you know the world around you? Let’s have a quiz, shall we? Given the current population growth rate of the world (1-2% per year) and given that today, we have about 2 billion children, what will be the number of children present in 2100? 4 billion, 6 billion or 8 billion.
What kind of biases plague us? What should be do to watch out for those? How can we aware of what is going on in the world? What are the worldly facts that we have got wrong? Do smarter people on the planet get all these facts correctly?
Take the test here first - http://forms.gapminder.org/s3/test-2018
Also, check this site out for https://www.gapminder.org/factfulness/
Uh… oh! A ton of unanswered questions. Listen to Krishna as he talks about the book “Factfulness” by Hans Rosling
Enjoy the Books and Stuff Podcast!
Welcome to the Books and Stuff Podcast Series.
Books and Stuff Podcast series - For a change, it was Bala who discussed about the book that he read.
How can one be intelligent about money? How does currency differ from money? For once, Bala read a book on one of his pet subjects - investing. Krishna took it as an opportunity to kick back and grill Bala about “How to increase your financial IQ” - Income sources, protecting your money, budgeting, leveraging and using financial information seem to be the best points out of the book. Listen till the end for a bonus feature!
Enjoy the Books and Stuff Podcast!
It was August 2011, a few months before I quit the company, a gentleman tossed a question at me, “If I lose my job as a Java programmer to a computer which will write Java code by itself, then so will you. Without me, who will you teach?”
I had merely applied one of the trends of technology evolution and showed the participants of my workshop a demo that they would understand. Code that might write itself.
I had by no means hinted that I was going to fire him. But, I thought about this for quite some time.
Who will replace professors, trainers and consultants?
It is better that I replace myself rather than someone else, so I decided to record it all into a computer and deliver it as a course.
So, here goes. I am very glad to announce the launch of an online course on Design Thinking on an online platform called NPTEL - National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning. I am co-teaching this course with Prof. Ashwin Mahalingam from IIT, Madras. The course is available at https://onlinecourses.nptel.ac.in/noc19%5Fmg23/. The course is now open for registration and we will start in Feb 2019. The wonderful folks at IISER, Pune, hard working people at NPTEL, my creative teaching assistant, Siddharth Maturi and his buddies - Nithin, Sam and Suprativ helped us with making this course possible.
Welcome to the Books and Stuff Podcast Series.
Books and Stuff Podcast series - Krishna narrates his own views and what he picked up from a book about a psychology professor who became a Poker champion.
Krishna shares his views on Dr. Annie Duke’s theories on decision making. Krishna personally struggled with making the simplest of decisions and this book resonates with his growth to a person who now thinks in bets. Listen to the podcast to know about this.
Enjoy the Books and Stuff Podcast!
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