Life/Faith: Attended a photography course last weekend. Instructor said that he would superglue the mode dials to “manual” on our cameras if he had choice, so that we will not ever go back to “auto” mode. Also learned about the balance between Aperture, Shutter Speed and ISO. Cannot change one without impacting the others. A bit like life itself – between, Work, Family and God.

Life: While interacting with the automated telephone of a company is not generally a great experience, it makes perfect sense when re-ordering a prescription.

Death: Five top regrets of the dying – article in Huffpost

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me
2. I wish I didn’t work so hard
3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier

Politics/Faith: Moment of truth for Christians in Syria. Their choice is between religious freedom and democracy. What will they choose?

Politics: Happy Republic Day India!

Work: It is amazing what you can achieve, as long as you don’t care who gets the credit.

Movies: Watched Zelary (2003-Czech/Slovak) set I 1942, during the peak of WWII. Story of a young resistance worker and medical student, given a new identity when she was about to be arrested, and sent to the county to marry a sawmill worker. This film was nominated for an academy award in the foreign film category. 4 out of 5.

Sunrise 22 Jan, 2012

Work: Having a team of engaged employees and getting good employee engagement scores in surveys are two different things.  You need separate strategies for both.

Faith: Having faith in the power of prayer is faith in your or someone else’s human power, and is different from having faith in God.

Thought: “Fascism is more of a natural state than democracy. To assume blithely that we can export democracy into any country we choose can serve paradoxically to encourage more fascism at home and abroad. Democracy is a state of grace that is attained only by those countries who have a host of individuals not only ready to enjoy freedom but to undergo the heavy labor of maintaining it” – Norman Mailer

Movies: Watched Lorna’s Silence. 2008 film about an Albanian woman living in Belgium, in a sham marriage. Won best screenplay award at Cannes and best French language film at the Lumiere Award. 4 out of 5 start in my rating.

Life: It is mazing how much you can catch up when you spend time with close friends or families. Something that I do not often get to do in larger gatherings.

Hidden Gems features six movies from India. All of them are being screened at the Dutton Theatre, part of the Castel Central Library downton Calgary, except Madholal, which will be screened at The Plaza Theatre in Kensington.

Screening times:

• Nov 21 – Saturday 6.30 PM: Chaturanga (Four Chapters) – Bengali with English subtitles
• Nov 22 – Sunday 3.00 PM: The Damned Rain – Marathi with English subtitles
• Nov 27 – Friday 8.00 PM: Samanthar – Marathi with English subtitles
• Nov 28 – Saturday 12.30 PM -Zero Bridge – Urdu/Kashmiri with English subtitles
• Nov 29- Sunday 4.30 PM: Madholal Keep Walking – Hindi with English subtitles (at Plaza Theatre)

You can find more information at:

http://hiddengemsfilmfestival.com/index.html

You can buy tickets in advance at:

• Downtown: Glory of India, 515 4th Ave. S.W., Ph. Kiran at (403) 263-8804.  Closed Sundays.
• S.W.  Niru Bhatia: (403) 457-3036 or email: niru@shaw.ca
• N.W.- Green Chili , 2128 Crowchild Trail. N.W. (across from McMahon Stadium), Ph. Aman at (403) 210-3132.  Open Mon – Sun 4 p.m. – 10 p.m.
• N.E.- Koh-i-noor Jewelers, 1005-5075 Falconridge Blvd. N.E. Ph. Mandeep at (403) 280-1111

Facebook changed the terms of use and then changed it back rather quickly, after realizing how important privacy is to people and several thousand cancelled their accounts. 

But this post is not about Facebook or privacy.

I am often asked whether we have a marketing plan focused on Facebook. My answer always is that we have a strategy to use social networking sites as part of our overall marketing strategy.  However, we do not build our plans around Facebook. Or for that matter Twitter. Or LinkedIn.  Though we use all these sites as part of our marketing program.

Do you remember ICQ chat? Friendster? …Myspace?

The point is, you cannot build your marketing program based on the assumption that any one social media site being around forever. The plan should be nimble enough for you use the best sites available at that point in time to market your product or services and engage the audience in a dialogue. You should be constantly tracking the available options to stay in step with the market place.

Let’s not assume that any one site will be there for ever.

This time Facebook did the right thing. And they are still around. We or may not be that lucky all the time.

Grasshopper poked around on Facebook all day long, while the ant built links on LinkedIn, one link at a time.

Then came the recession. The party was over, and both lost their jobs. Grasshopper looked at the people he poked in the past on Facebook and found several interesting people to share a beer with, but no one he could contact to get some job connections.

On the other hand, ant opened up his LinkedIn account, joined the “Resting Communicators” group and informed all his professional contacts that he is available for employment.

I think you already understood the moral of the story.

LinkedIn is a professional network of over 35 million professionals across 170 professions in over 200 countries with average household income of US 109,000.00.

That was in September. The average income has crashed since. So have many careers.

To borrow a phrase from Prison Break “The hunted shall become the hunters”. I am of course not talking about criminals. With an over-heated job market, LinkedIn was used till recently more by recruiters, hunting for employees.

That is changed now. The hunted have now become the hunters.

As the job situation worsens, people will renew friendships and add new ones in LinkedIn. As people lose jobs, they will add their current colleagues to LinkedIn, expanding their networks.

I saw an article around the middle of last year that LinkedIn is for losers. That is all changed now. Networking is the most productive way of finding professional jobs.

In my rather simplistic illustration above, I painted a rather bleak picture of Facebook users. That was just to bring out the contrast of course. Facebook will be slowly emerge as a job finding network as well, though professional are not likely to use this channel to find jobs. But Facebook might emerge as a good channel to recruit entry level and casual jobs.

LinkedIn will sharpen their business model to monetize the new popularity. They have already started an advertising network with other web sites, similar to Google ad network. They offer custom-made display ad solutions to large advertisers and text ads for small advertisers.

“LinkedIn Answers” will hit the mean stream soon. This is one of the most powerful ways to get feedback on ideas and to conduct research among your industry peers

A few of weeks back, LinkedIn tied up with Lotus Notes to provide corporate employee networking solutions. We can expect to see them doing more corporate solutions with their technology, as more and more corporations look for more out-of-the box solutions, instead of custom build by their IT departments.

Targeted professional sites like Sermo (networking for physicians) Adgabber (Advertising) will grow, and many more will emerge soon.  Other professional networking sites like Xing, Yorz, Ecademy,Ryze, Spoke and Plaxo will have to sink or swim this year.

Unless something totally unexpected happens, I think 2009 clearly belongs to LinkedIn and the ant.

Beyond that?  Your guess is as good as mine.

What Gandhi said in 1925...

This is displayed on the wall of the Gandhi museum in New Delhi.

The opinions in India about the movie are mixed. Some call it poverty-porn. The others say that it is a celebration of the never-say-die spirit of the urban poor in India. However, looks like most Indians are happy about the Oscar nominations, especially for the original music by A R Rahman. Many Indians also believe that the Bollywood-style storyline and emotional masala mix is at last being recognized by the world.

Canadian/Western media on the other hand seems to love the movie as it fits perfectly with, and further reinforced the picture that they already have of India. It is also the feel good movie for the troubled economic times. The masala-lite format seems to be acceptable to the most of the audience.

I personally do not think much of the movie, except the Taj scene, which I thought was funny. But I do believe it is close to the Mumbai reality.

Spent five days in Kerala (Cochin and Aranmula) before reaching Goa. Great food in both places, but a lot more expensive that what I am used to.

Mumbai (Bombay) continues to be great for shopping – nothing else. I wish the activists who lead a 100,000 person march soon after the terrorist attacks will lead a similar civic movement to make Mumbai cleaner.

After all this, when you are finished, they charge to your insurance-coverage-hilt. The x-rays that they do for no particular reason cost more than a Picasso, by square-inch. And they are very eager to have you back as soon as the the insurance coverage will allow…don’t get me started!

Had to celebrate Christmas early this year with friends and family as we will be up in the sky on Christmas eve. That will be a new experience. Flights from Calgary were all delayed yesterday due to bad weather. Hope it gets better before tomorrow.

Finished work yesterday earlier than expected. That gave me some bonus hours.

Yes, one more thing to do…the “traditional” dentist visit before the year end. That happens later today.