Presidential election 08

I have loosened my Public Policy Hat enough to follow the presidential election of 2008.

Just - as IOWA wins pour in, I firmly belive that Obama is going to be the next one..

Somehow, he exudes the next generation, hopes and change prospects; and at the same time mature, responsible person...

Lets see.....

Gardner Writes and His Speech

It was great to listen to this prolific speaker Dr. Gardner Campbell on 'Deschool, Reboot, Real School' - and he was delivering at UMD his keynote address at the Innovations in Teaching and Learning Conference.

He talked about Doug Engelbart ; one of the person I like and appreciate a lot. Engelbert is known for his mouse, but he has not been able to implement his Knoweldge Society Domain framework well. He still laments on that. In future, given a chance, I intend to meet and disucss with him. Gopika Kannan, my friend and collegue who worked with me on the National Research and Education Development work for India, had met him sometime back. She reports back, Doug is not happy the way his thinking is interpreted. What he is thinking is something very different and unique. It will need to walk thorugh his thoughts several times to learn from his eight decades of experience. Well that is another vision all together in the learing curve of life....

Gardner did a great presentation on what role Information Technology can play in the "deschooled" society.

Follow Gardener Campbell's blog -- there is some great stuff there.

I carry home his three points - Addressivity, Eutrapelia and Real School.

And will visit his 2nd Life project soon...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Indian Education System Revamp

I have been receiving some interests from some universities and colleges, mostly engineering from India to adopt to the best systems in education. The education system in India seems the best; at least the IITs and IIMs. But the level two systems probably a way behind the best. The recent influx of IT curriculum has come into the campuses in India, but the infrastructure and training is not geared up for that. It is happening with small increaments and will take years. Further, the salaries and the lack of challenges for he professors and lecturers are not good.

I never imagined Engineering Colleges or Unviersities without a good Workshop or Laboratory; but that is happening now. My basics are clear from making "Dirty Hands" in Babcock Systems or German Measuring Devices it the Hot Workshops; toiling hard with sweat to make a hexagonal rod from a round one.

However, during 2001-2003 I have been visiting all IITs and engg colleges as part of National Innovation Foundation(NIF) giving projects to students and have guided students for projects (around 20-30). In the span 2003-06; I have been visiting faculty to engineering colleges giving lectures on Project Guidance, Entrepreneurship, Life after engg, recent trends on technologies, motivation etc. This was sponsored by colleges and was organized by NGOs, Pune management association, Instt. of Engrs - as activities towards revamping the system of education. The industry was supporting us a lot and the best was getting industrialists and professionals from the field to come with us and sharing the experience. In one way. we used to conduct one day camps, faculty meetings and trying to bring about industry-institute collaboration.

However, the model had some potential and we were working to put forth a national model towards this. The bottom line was hands-on, projects, system revamp, changing faculty mindset, industry interaction etc. Our lectures and activities were major success and before coming here I used get paid-invitations to deliver the same.

I came across a recent artivle in The Chronicle : India's Knowledge Commission Calls for a Major Overhaul of Higher-Education System : http://chronicle.com/temp/email2.php?id=2shW9t6xcknGyHqPzw8gDxsgpDmH8kCZ_

" India needs to increase its number of universities to 1,500 by 2015, from 350 now, an advisory body said........" it goes...and refers to the following report :-

http://knowledgecommission.gov.in/recommendations/higher.asp

It is intersting to see thing to imporve..but the problem remains Quantity Vs Quality..May be a well judged balance is the need of the hour...

Serenus...

It was not unusual for Chetan to put this word as his custom message on the Gmail Talk. Well, this is something to notice; now a days the hidden personality being revealed on the web differently. However. Chetan and his creative musings are a good combination; since I know him as a mentor and friend for last a decade. He is in the core list of friends..


But this blog is not about Chetan, it is about Serenus. It is a latin word meaning calm and serene. Also some words that follow the same line are Serena or Serenity

Selene is the Roman Goddess of Moon. The beauty is the story that follows. Selene is known for her countless love affairs. The most famous of her loves is the shepherd Endymion. Other affairs of Selene's include involvement with Zeus and also Pan.

The details can be found at
http://thanasis.com/selene.htm and http://www.theoi.com/Titan/Selene.html

Endymion was a legendary character in Greek mythology. His is a unconventional love story. It is said that in time Selene bore the handsome mortal fifty daughters. Scholars have suggested that the number of daughters is symbolic, with each daughter possibly representing an individual month of an Olympiad. The details of his compelling legend have inspired art, poetry, and literature over the centuries.

The myth is twisted a bit to accommodate the mortal and an immortal engagement with each other. As a mortal, Endymion was subject to aging and death. But the Goddess Selene is young and beautiful for all times. To solve this, the Goddess of the Moon cast a spell on her lover, making him sleep forever. In this state of eternal slumber, Endymion kept both his youth and his good looks.

But as it goes "Endymion was visited by Selene every night and softly kissed by her rays of light".

I am not sure whether Selene and Endymion live for ever or not; but they live as the epitome of their love. Most importantly Selene lives in the words; and Serenus is one of them.

Chetan says he has a special liking for the word....GOD knows why, he will not reveal, and he goes one step further, to name his future baby in this name..Well; we all wait .....

Open Source

Can the open source movement adapt to include a sustainable commercial products? - -that is an old question perhaps and have been asked on severa occassions since the Open Source started. Well, I think eventually it will, but not yet. Yes, that was pretty vague. But you have to look at the big picture here. At some point, I believe that Open Source and closed source software will have to learn to work together as the lines between the two continue to blur.

In the 1960s and 70s, all software was open source, so customers could customize for their exact needs. With the rise of packaged software, that trend waned in the 80s and 90s, but it has now re-emerged with the rise of Linux and the internet. These days, a broad range of open-source infrastructure software, tools, and applications is available.It's interesting to compare the commercial software space with that of open source. Distros add packages all the time, and it's seen as a positive thing. The current trend is for companies to give their closed source products to the open source world to be bundled with distros, the complete opposite of the Apple situation, so obviously there's a different dynamic in open source.

History goes back to few decades of development, since 80’s. Richard Stallman , GNU Manifesto, Project and The Free Software Foundation, Linus Torvalds, The Linux Explosion, Netscape and Open Source, Eric Raymond, and his The Cathedral and The Bazaar …..and the list goes on..

I am not saying anything new; but a mild compilation of the follwing sites :-

http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar http://www.opensource.org/history.html
http://www.opensource.edu/
http://www.opensource.org/osd.html

http://www.freestandards.org/en/Main_Page

http://www.opensource.org/halloween.html

I am ardent fan of what is OPEN SOURCE..and my blogsite also uses the Creative Commons license from http://creativecommons.org/

Open sorce or free/libre domain is talked in te software environment. But I argue, what about the folklores of the grand-mother days, what about the recipes passed onto form the mother to the daughter? Are they not open source?

Well..that is another story..but Sean Madian of OSDL agrees no less.....

Kazunori Konishi and Kanreki

Kazunori Konishi is the Principal Research Engineer,KDDI R&D Laboratories Inc. and also he is the trustee of Japan Network Information Center (JPNIC). JPNIC is the National Internet Registry in Japan that provides allocation and registration services of IP addresses and AS numbers. (http://www.nic.ad.jp/). JPNIC contributes to the society by providing Internet-related information as an information hub, and performing research, education and enlightenment activities.

Kazunori Konishi is a interesting person and at 60 years, he is dynamic and enthusiastic. I met him in the Internet2 fall 2006 meeting and we were together on various meetings. His involvement with APAN (http://www.apan.net) and the vision of taking it forward was the main discussion agenda for us. We agreed on various futuristic efforts and goals.

However, in the APAN dinner meeting, on 6th Dec 2006, it was a pleasant surprise when we celebrated the 60th Birthday of Konishi. Of course the food was great with the drinks. Copies of a sheet went around the tables and it read as follows :

-----------------------------------------------------------

Kanreki

For men, the 60th birthday is called kanreki, the recognition of his “second infancy.” The Japanese characters in the word kanreki literally mean “return” and “calendar.” The traditional calendar, which was based on the Chinese calendar, was organized on 60-year cycles. The cycle of life returns to its starting point in 60 years, and as such, kanreki celebrates that point in a man’s life when his personal calendar has returned to the calendar sign under which he was born.Traditionally, friends and relatives are invited for a celebratory feast on one’s 60th birthday.

It is customary for the celebrant to be given a red hood and wear a red vest. These clothes are usually worn by babies and thus symbolize the celebrant’s return to his birth.

-----------------------------------------

This was in explanation to the red dress for the 60 year baby and for the celebration. Japanese tradition has great words and ways of celebrating occasions.

Kazunori Konishi was as youthful and fresh as a baby.

Kazunori San; we look forward for your koki (70th), kiju (77th joyous year), sanju(80), beiju (88) and sotsuju(90) and hakuju (99) ...and the celebrations there on with APAN group and others...

The following photo says it all ...

Institution Building

Prof. Anil K. Gupta (www.iimahd.ernet.in/~anilg) always says; "institution bulding is not an easy task. It needs many elements, aspects and ways. Most of them are ethical and moral values on which the institution is based on...." and he goes on the discourse of his lecture with his twinkling eyes with passion to make the person understand it. He has built institutions, sustained them and most important is he has preserved the value and essence of these institutions.

Management thinking will tell that Institutions and Organisations are different entities and has diffferent deifinitions. I agree to it; however I strongly advocate that Organisation is a subset of an Institutions. Organisation is a brick and mortal model; institution is a value based model beyond organisation. There is a flow of energy, vibration and dyanmics that is associated with an institution than an organisation. This is a subtle difference, but understanding it makes the difference clear.

I have seen with my more than a decade of experience in various management cadres and organisations I am associated with, that it is not easy to sustain an organisation or institution. Each and every institutions has a different model, has a different set of disciplines, has a different ethos and culture. The 'Culture' of the isntitution is what makes it different. Even the "MOM and POP" organisations or institutions which has been sustainable have been able to feed some culture into the institutions.

- Many times I try to ask this question : " Why do institutions or oragnisations fail to survive?" I think the best answer lies in exploring the truth that why the institution was born? In general the technology vision based insitutions have seen death more often than management or human resource based institutions.

I Will need more analysis to perahaps discuss it more..and who knows it is not a bad idea to have my next book on this topic..any advance incentive from publishers please...

The Pious waters of Ganga, and the Holy Bath

The phone call from Rashmi Sharma (Bachhi as I dearly call her) brought my memories of Haridwar and Rishikesh. Bachhi was a colleague in C-DAC and has been very close to family as a sister relation. Her career path took her to Siemens and then to Oracle.

Bachhi hails from Rishikesh, one of the pious and religious places in the north of India in the state of Uttaranchal. Both Haridwar and Rishikesh are on the banks of River Ganga. Surrounded by hills and bisected by the wide and sluggish Ganges, Rishikesh is claimed as the `Yoga Capital of the World'. It is an excellent place to meditate and study yoga. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rishikesh and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haridwar give information about them.

For the past three years for some or other occasion or work or as a tourist I had been visiting Haridwar and Rishikesh in the months of December and January. I remember the bath in the Ganges. There is something special about it. It is beyond the words to express. First in the morning cold in the open air, it is very difficult even to go near the cold water (sometimes sub-zero). But then one goes with the spirit and the soul calling. Once you are inside the water, the coldness vanishes and many dips after that becomes a ritual. The cold water really rejuvenates the body and the feeling of lightness stays for weeks. As it is said in the Hindu religious texts, the Mother Ganga takes away and washes the sins with her purified water, makes you pure.

I am not sure whether the sins are washed away or not, but my knees and legs get a different feelings sure. The body gets a different touch which stays for weeks together. Every year I look forward for a chance to go and take another bath, but may be every year it does not become possible.

Mythology and texts of religion has several stories to depict the birth of Godden Ganga as a river. One which I remember goes as follows :- A king Sagar, ancestor of Lord Rama, performed a Aushwamedha Yagna. This ceremony consisted in sending a horse round the Indian world, with defiance to all the earth to arrest its progress. If the horse returned unopposed , it was understood to be acquiescence in the supremacy of the king, and the horse was then solemnly sacrificed to the gods. When King Sagar made preparations for the 100th sacrifice, Indra, King of Heaven, who had himself performed the ceremony a 100 times, jealous of being displaced by this new rival, stole the horse, and concealed it in a subterranean cell, where the sage Kapila, or Kapila Muni, was absorbed in meditation, dead to all occurrences of the external world.

The sixty thousand sons of Sagar traced the horse to its hiding place, and believing the sage to be the author of the theft assaulted him. The holy man being thus roused opened his eyes and cursed the assailants, who were immediately burnt to ashes and sentenced to hell.

After three genrations, Bhagiratha, who after severe austerities, propitiated the Goddess Ganga , and she agreed to come down to earth to rescue the sons of Sagar from the ashes.

However, the impact of her fall would be so severe, that it could be borne by none less than Lord Shiva himself. Therefore Bhagiratha went into meditation again and obtained Shiva's consent after many more austerities. Finally, the river came down and fell into Lord Shiva's matted hair, (this manifestation of Lord Shiva is known as Gangadhara), from where she separated into seven streams, of which three flowed to the west and three to the west. The seventh stream followed Bhagirath to earth and then to the rest of the India.

Bhagirath patiently led the river down to the sea from the Himalayas and for this reason the Ganges is also known as the Bhagirathi.

The story is interesting; and many a times standing on the bank of the river in moonlight - I used to wonder, this is the same water that has given life to the Sons of Sagar, the same water which is the blood stream of India. The civilization has started with these waters. Many cultures have been cultivated on its banks and water, many wars have been fought, many politics has been played and India has flourished. But the serenity, the calmness and the pious feeling of the water remains unchanged, remains there from time immemorial.

--- I will for another bath in the Ganges in the cold water- to rejuvenate myself again.....

Fall 2006 Internet2 Member Meeting; 4-7 December - 2006

I was in Chicago for the last week to attend the 2006 fall member meeting. Beautifull place and a beautifull meeting with lots of orchestration and events. The weather added to the flavour - it was 6 inches of snow and -15 deg Celsius. Great..!!



Amongst other things, Internet2 celebrated the 10 years of existance. In 1996, the higher education research and education community came together around the idea of transforming advanced networking in this country. The program in Chicago offered few sessions that highlighted innovative uses of advanced networking and technical sessions on the development and evolution of high-performance network infrastructures, especially the recently announced new Internet2 Network.

Internet2 is the foremost U.S. advanced networking consortium. Led by the research and education community since 1996, Internet2 promotes the missions of its over 300 members by providing both leading-edge network capabilities and unique partnership opportunities that together facilitate the development, deployment and use of revolutionary Internet technologies.


Internet2 Brings along 208 universities together to share resources over a 10 Gbps network connection across USA – with sharing, collaboration and virtual groups working on Scientific and Research problems. Today it has 208 US universities; 66 corporate members, many affiliate members, international partners and aiming towards a new Internet2 backbone network; Middleware, Security Measurement etc.

Commonly this is known as National Research and Education Networks (NREN). Internet2 also seeks global relationships with many countries. Many other countries have also their own NRENs and Interent2 is collaborating and partly spearheading the efforts globally..