New begining to new learning

Back after couple of years of hiatus, probably because I have been getting back to my comfort zone of learning new things. No point dwelling on Past, future is here to say.

Learning new stuff is exciting but with excitement comes a strange sense of burden of how to retain the learning and expand the learning as well, if you want to retain some of the stuff , how do I commit this to the secondary human storage (HDD, Human Disk Drive :) )

With this learning enters new world of Visual thinking and Visual colloboration...


Concentrate on How and What for now, follow it up with why and When...

http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20121121191930-10842349-start-designing-your-life

Interesting talk by Ruth Malan kind of kick started the visual thinking
http://vimeo.com/6219439

Things which I learned are good resources

http://www.danroam.com/

http://thisisindexed.com/

Effective Communication -II : A Word A Week(AWAW)

Folks,
Thanks for the feedback from last week’s column. I hope that write up was effective as I intend to be. Like most of you folks English is not my first language and I tend to make mistakes as well and am not ashamed when someone points out that. So please don’t think I am trying to point fingers at someone or any specific incident. I have compiled few words which are used/misused and would clarify in AWAW session.

Continuing our discussion on Effective communication, I have an interesting word for this week. The choice of word is interesting because as I was composing this newsletter I realized oxford decided to release few new words into the dictionary. Most common words which you and I have heard during past FIFA world cup 2010 is ”vuvuzelas”. Another word which I have used commonly which released in the dictionary is “chillax” (I can see my college buddy’s name written all over it, he added x to all commonly used words to sound more like “Asterix and Obelix” world). All these words have been added to Oxford dictionary which would mean in English(UK), it would take some time to propagate to English(US). I will write something about these two English versions of dictionary/standards in a separate column.

I have manage to write couple of paragraphs of this column without yet getting to the word of the week but setting the stage. This word has had an interesting journey from being an non-existent word to be a word to be added to one of the dictionary(Oxford, so the setup in the second paragraph). Still this word is considered non-existent word in most parts of the world. Merriam Webster’s hasn’t added the word “Prepone” to the dictionary. Oxford Dictionary online suggests this word from India with the usage of Postpone and Pre. I did a quick search of word Prepone in Webster’s dictionary and couldn’t find it . Hence not the widely accepted. Let us take about wide acceptance in a separate column. Why didn’t the word Postpone have a antonym “prepone” to begin with ? That is because the word postpone came from Latin word “Postponere”. Latin didn’t have a “Preponere”. For folks interested in Etymology here is the scoop

Etymology: Latin postponere to place after, postpone, from post- + ponere to place — more at position
Date: circa 1520


My recommendation for this week would be to avoid using this word in Business communication until it is widely accepted. Instead the right word usage is “advance” . For e.g. “I will advance my trip by a week” instead of “I will prepone my trip by a week” . You can chose to use this word in non-official communication to force it to Webster’s dictionary J. Business communication should be clear, concise and communicative (3Cs).



Reference:
[1] http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100819/od_nm/us_britain_dictionary
[2] http://oxforddictionaries.com/view/entry/m_en_gb0658300#m_en_gb0658300
[3] http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/prepone
[4] http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/postpone

PS: Please don’t hesitate to forward this to your friends /colleagues, Spread the word.

Effective Communication - A Word A Week (AWAW)

Folks,

I have been thinking about writing this column/news letter about Effective Communication in the context of communicating with the customer. This communication forum is not to point fingers at anyone in particular but educate ourselves from how to do certain things and what not to do certain things. Most of the emails/document we write is read/reviewed by customers and does travel high up reporting chain, for example a project plan/Design documents we produce is reviewed by Directors , VPs and CXOs in some cases.



I am going to broadly classify on Words which we use in everyday communication. The words which we misuse as well. This week I am going to concentrate particularly on a (nonexistent) word which we misuse regularly. Per English dictionary(http://www.m-w.com for example) doesn’t have this word. “Updation” is the word in reference here. There is no word in American/British English dictionary. I have seen this word used regularly. The right usage should be update.



Let us refrain from using the word “updation” but instead use “Update”



For you grammar interested folks, “updation” is wrongly used as a verb , however update(the correct usage) can be used as a transitive verb as is. Update is also a noun based on the context you use for example



Update as transitive verb would be

(Origin of the usage Date: 1941)

: to bring up to date



Update as Noun would be

(Origin of usage Date: 1965)

1 : an act or instance of updating
2 : current information for updating something

I can See Clearly Now

Well it is not the starting line of the song, I am refering to my new glasses I got. Man it is a different world, I feel motivated as I can see things the way they used to appear few years ago... For few years now even with glasses I wasnt able to see the same, but I always felt the glasses wouldn't help me either, boy I was wrong. For example the lady at the counter looked a different person with new glasses, I was so happy that I decided to take a small walk in the mall to exercise my new found Vision. If I could appreciate this how would a Blind person with no vision gets his vision back?

Run