Shuk's Blog

I recently attended PMI chapter seminar “Painting with numbers” by Randall Bolten. I found this seminar extremely useful for anyone in comminication business (well who is not!!)  specially for project/program  managers. I have seen multiple times, we, as PM’s do not adhere to best presentation practices and confuse audience with our reports. This seminar was a great reminder of best practices and gave tips to optimize communication with numbers. Randall showed us how we can skectch beautiful potraits with numbers !!!

I am sharing seminar flyers below that I find extremely useful in achieving effective communication. 

Major take away points for me are as follows:

Ø  Respect the audience

Ø  Show data in context

Ø  Use KI’s (key indicators) whenever possible

Ø  Take some time to format the data

Ø  Keep it simple, structured, relevant (many times simple is hardest thing to achieve)

Ø No Pie Charts:

o   Almost in all cases, there is a better way to present data in other form of charts such as bar chart or scatter diagram

o   Pie chart takes more space and shows least number of data points for analysis

o   Human brain process linear chart information much more quickly than the angle one

Click here to download:

Painting_with_numbers_publish.pdf (488 KB)

(download)

Click here to download:

Painting_with_numbers_publish.pdf (488 KB)

(Published with persmission from Randall Bolten )

Randall has published a great book on this topic. If you want to deep dive in this subject matter,  you can get the book from Amazon below.

Microsoft killed most clicked Icon on Windows......(well!! at least not present in Win8 Consumer preview). It was a drag for me and for most people around me who are early adopters of Win 8. I keep on hitting IE icon located at same place where Start icon used to be...I am glad to see free app from Stardock that revives the most sought after feature "Start" menu...Thanks Stardock!!!

It can be downloaded here

Well...Steve, iSalute you. May your soul rest in peace!!!

It was not a great day for me, first shoot-out in HP Cupertino campus and now the news: departure of legend...

For many of us, Steve will always live within ourselves...I would be proud of myself if I could achieve fraction of charisma, dedication, intellect and.... that Steve had.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-steve-jobs-obit-20111006,0,7210103.story

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-20116345-37/how-steve-jobs-reshaped-the-tech-industry/

Microsoft released Windows 8 developer preview today at Anaheim. It can be downloaded from link below:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/apps/br229516

Lots of promises: Faster boot, Metro UI, IE 10, Native ISO mounting, Hyper-V many more...lets see :)

I am tempted to experince Win 7 mobile phone now.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/cell-phones/microsofts-windows-phone-7-is-the-most-...

So finally we have marriage between two long time business rivals: ATT and T-Mobile. Now T-Mobile on ATT shoulders to move forward.!!!! :) It looks like a forced marriage consumated by a preist also popular as Verizon.

Look for more details here: http://www.businessinsider.com/att-buying-t-mobile-usa-in-39-billion-deal-2011-3

                                       http://newsroom.t-mobile.com/articles/more-information-att-acquires-tmobile

Guess who is who??

http://news.yahoo.com/upgradeyourlife

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_technews/20110209/ts_yblog_technews/upgrade-your-life-reasons-to-hold-off-on-the-verizon-iphone

After long wait and much speculation, HP just revealed its new slate/TouchPad. I was fortunate enough to see/paly with these units today. I really liked the build quality and it has front facing camera too. Great thing; No funky port....standard micro USB port for connectivity and charging (although this guy supports wireless charging too!!!) . Now we have another great player in the market with iOS, Android -- it's WebOS..

Know more about HP TouchPad

Few pics..

(download)

Click here to download:

hp-revealed-touchpad-with-palm-webos-nfxIamCABtniclzdyyss.zip (4.38 MB)

Google Chrome reached to 120 million install base. Great, seamless user experience, lightning fast speed, Google commitment for continuous improvement and agile release cycle made this possible. Where IE 9 release seems to be pushed in Feb2011, some interesting statistics claim Chrome browser share around ~22%. Google again proved being late in the market does not mean a delayed success or definite failure...rather leads refined innovation. Innovation rocks!!

http://www.conceivablytech.com/5345/featured/google-chrome-at-120-million-users/

Good news for Chrome users and great news for Google!!! and bad news for ... ;)

Wow....Excellent video in which a kitty is testing an Ipad touch capabilities..Looks like all enjoyed this (user) experience!!