California Governor’s Race

Saw the last debate between Steve Westly and Phil Angelides. I must admit, neither of these candidates appear to have what it takes to beat Arnie. Angelides has a Gray Davis like presence while Steve Westly comes across as a John Edwards like candidate with and added negative of a “deer in headlights” look particularly when he looks ito the camera!

Between the two Democratic aspirants, given that there are no filmstars (!) in the fray, it might be best for the party to support Steve Westly. The man is a Silicon Valley product and has made his money. He can match Arnie’s “I am an outsider, I don’t need no money from special interests” stand even if he can’t compete on name recognition. Besides, having a valley man in the Governor’s mansion might just be what the valley, California and to some extent the US needs to bring back even the partial economic glory days of the 90s.

At the last recall election, Arnie rode his outsider image, his filmstar popularity and Gray Davis’ fall from grace, to come to power. This time around, he appears to be far better prepared after his Sacremento experience. He is far more capable today to fight a conventional battle including a debate or two to win the election. I saw Arnie speak recently at a public event and I felt that he had come a long way. He gave a stump speech without refering to any notes. He did a fine job of staying on message. With experience he is proving to be a very astute politician. Besides, he is riding high from his budget surplus gains. At the present moment, he seems very likely to win re-election.

Time Cover Story: Gen Michael Hayden

One of the recent issues of the Time mag had Gen Michael Hayden on the cover. And guess what the title was? It reads, “Does this man have your phone number?”

I couldn’t help laughing! In this midst of the NSA wire-tapping scandal it is understandable that opponents of the Govt. accuse it of wrong doing, tapping phone calls of innocent Americans etc. But the press takes the cake for exaggeration, sensationalism and a desperate attempt to inject paranoia into everyday lives of Americans. The press makes it sound like Gen Hayden is walking around with a Palm full of phone numbers!

The wire-tapping issue is one of those “Damned if you do, Damned if you don’t” issues where the Govt. can never win. On the one hand, the Govt. has to protect further attacks. On the other any kind of surveillance is bound to be criticized. Its simply impractical for the the Govt. to have formally announced the wire-tapping plan and taken everyone’s blessing before launching it!

Gen Hayden seems headed for confirmation in any case. It makes no sense to have a long drawn battle over this nomination, especially when the Democrats don’t have the numbers to push back.

Second ODI: WI Earn Fine Win

A fine show by WI. Great fielding and some tight bowling ensured the WI an exciting win. India came cross as a tad over-confident. Each batsman seemed to think that the next man can always do the job. With Yuvraj looking solid right through, all he needed was someone to hang out with him till the end. Unfortunately for India it was not be.

Not to take away any credit from Yuvraj for a superb performance but at the death I thought he goofed up rather badly. After scoring two fours (one a fluke and the other one an impressive drive) he had no reason to go for a wild slog. A more seasoned player might have bet on his ability to pick two runs of the remaining three balls. Worst case, he could have tied the game. Out in the middle, in the midst of all the excitement and pressure, its easier said than done to do the right thing. But it won’t hurt for India’s sporting heroes to occasionally bet on common sense over raw physical ability.

Moview Review: Waqt

Title: Waqt
Language: Hindi
Starring: Amitabh, Akshay Kumar, Priyanka Chopra.

One word to describe this film. Awful. Please avoid.

Useless son (Akshay) gets married (Priyanka), doting father (Amitabh) decides to fix son, drives him out, then Dad turns sick doesn’t tell son, heavy melodrama follows (Dad and daughter-in-law wheeled into the hospital at the same time!), and then it ends. Thank God! As always, a few meaningless, yet glamorous songs are thrown in. Amitabh was his usual self (its obvious he’ll do any role as long as you pay him well). Priyanka Chopra is there purely for glamor purposes. Akshay has nothing special to offer either.

In short, this film is complete trash. Thankfully, I slept through parts of it.

I am told that the movie was a big hit in India! Please….

Graduation Speech: Cheney’s humor, McCain booed

Cheney-Rumsfeld: Long time buddies

Check out this article about Cheney’s recent speech at LSU (graduation ceremony). It just confirms that its virtually impossible for Rumsfeld be dumped as long as Cheney is around. Nice to read that Cheney at least has a sense of humor. Haven’t come across anything to this effect since the start of this administration.

Senator McCain: Kissing up to the Conservatives

Senator McCain was booed at his speech in at NY’s New School. It is understandable given that he has lately been busy playing politics to gear up for his Presidential bid. Despite being a war veteran with the image of “straight shooter” he has been actively supporting the war in Iraq. Hats off to the students for their bold speeches. It take plenty of guts and conviction!

WI vs India: First ODI

Boy! What a close match!

India unnecessarily choked (almost!) and drove the match to the brink. Mohd. Kaif fighting his way back to form almost earned his team a defeat by struggling at the very end before pulling it off with a 4 on the penultimate delivery. If India had lost, cries for Kaif’s head would have multiplied overnight. In any case, I suspect the man seems to be recovering from his slump.

Dravid’s innings was perfect, to say the least. He appears to be in the best form of his career. Leading from the front, he should no signs of panic whatsoever even when the asking rate started to climb. His pull shot and straight drive of Taylor early in the innings were absolute copy-book. His six over mid-on showed that he can make the occassional big hits when needed.

The WI are so unpredictable and that’s part of why they are an interesting bunch to watch. When WI get going, they can be match winners. A case in point. Taylor who opened the bowling was instantly attacked by both Dravid and Viru. He came back into the attack with 4 overs to go and produced a gem of an over. Kaif faced 5 balls which produced no runs and the last ball earned him a single!

The seamers bowl at a consistent 135+. Batsman like Gayle and Lara can single handedly destroy the opposition. However, the WI fielding was what made the ultimate difference. So many direct hits were missed and a few catches were dropped which combined proved too costly for the team as a whole.

TiECon 2006: Day 1

Attended TiECon 2006 (Day 1). It was packed. In fact, you realize right at the parking lot!

Here is a brief summary of the happenings based on sessions I attended.

Shashi Tharoor, Arnie and John Doerr were the big draws of the day.

Shashi Tharoor came across as a charming, British-accented, intelligent, sensible speaker. His fine speech blended UN issues such as terrorism, poverty, hunger, etc with the TiECon themes of entrepreneurship, disruption and convergence. Here are a few interesting quotes from the speech.

  • “The Internet revolution has a lot of liberty, some fraternity and absolutely no equality”.
  • “You can have Coca Cola without being Coca Colonized”
  • “We are like Egyptian Mummies, pressed for time”
  • “What you understand is very often based on our assumptions. So we should question our assumptions”
  • When asked about the relevance of UN he narrated a story about Adam & Eve. Apparently, Eve was out of sorts and kind of ignoring Adam. In response Adam asked Eve, “Is there someone else?” In other words, if not the UN who else?
  • An American agriculture expert once went to Punjab on a special mission to help Indian farmers. He asked the India farmer where his farm ends and the man pointed to him and showed him that the farm ended at the far away fence. In response the American said he had to drive for a couple of hours in his tractor to the south end of his farm, then another 3-4 hours to the other end etc. etc. In response, the Indian farmer said, “I know exactly what you mean, I too had a tractor like that once!”.

John Doerr: The chat between John Doerr and Michael Malone (Virtual Corp fame) was informative.

  • John Doerr said that KP is no longer a white boys club has a global face. He showed a picture of the KP’s team with a couple of India and Chinese faces.
  • According to him Energy, Clean tech and Green Tech are hot area for investment.
  • He also talked about social entrepreneurship. The importance of support people like Muhammed Yunus (Of Grameen Bank) and someone who runs performs Eye operations in India (Sankara Eye Foundation??) (He couldn’t remember the name).
  • John is big on the threat of Global warming. He showed pictures of the ice melting in Iceland. What the world would look like if more of that melting continued etc.

Arnold Schwazanegger: Arnie walked into great applause and launched into a standard campaign speech riding on his recent budget surplus wave. Nothing new, just the usual pitch but I thought he did a fine job of the delivery with no notes whatsoever. He didn’t fumble unlike Bush does so often. I think he is going to be really hard to beat for the Demos come Nov given their lack of star power.

After his speech each of the TiE past President (Suhas, Kanwal, Raj, Sridhar, Kailash) asked a question each. Arnie didn’t produce any great answers but did a fair job but stayed on message at all times. Kanwal (true to his style) asked him a pointed question. “When do you plan to visit Bangalore?” Without being direct or committal, Arnie launched into a long pitch about how India and US relations are important etc . etc.

A couple of Arnie’s humorous quips.

  • “I am finally at a place where I am not the only one with an accent”
  • Looking at all the TiE Presidents he said, “No women here?”

Web 2.0 Panel: I attended the session on Web 2.0 moderated by Michael Arrington of TechCrunch fame. The panel featured a couple of VCs and founders of “digg“, “Kaboodle” and “Sphere“. The gentleman from Sphere was extremely articulate and his comments were by far the best of the lot. I was disappointed about the lack of concrete discussion on business models. Why are VCs investing? What d they look for? What excited them in this space? It appeared as though there was none. From what I could gather, Web 2.0 has a lot of cool things happening, but is quite speculative at this point from a purely business perspective.

The Complex Sale, Inc.: Rick Page, author and founder of this firm spoke about Sales, Sales strategy etc. The slides were very good but I wasn’t necessarily bowled over by the pitch. Maybe I am just too jaded from all the sales stuff I have heard over the years (hunter, farmer and the works..).

Personally, I think the Internet has changed sales dramatically, especially, when selling a commoditized low cost product, where the Internet is the primary medium for lead generation. In such scenarios, for a large part, the actual sale itself happens via the internet. You make the sales very often without ever meeting the customer. The customer signs up for free asks a few questions (support) during use and then signs up. There is no warm body making the actual sale and coming home with a p.o.

This is very different from conventional sales. I don’t think the sales person who can accomplish this fits into the conventional sales categories. In fact, it is a combination of marketing savvy and sales. There was little or no discussion on this topic at this talk.

I think this market is ripe for growth of consultants! (Seth Godin comes to mind). How do you sell on the net? What’s an effective sales strategy? What does a good sales person who can make this happen look like?

Ballmer Interview

Check out Steve Ballmer’s interview in the Mercury News (reg required). I liked his response to this question in particular…

Q A bunch of companies are offering Web-based applications that could replace Windows. How do you decide which applications to rewrite for the Web?

A The question is, which ones can the user benefit from if they’re rewritten? We did the first real Web application. It’s called Outlook Web Access, which was the first Ajax application. Why? Because there are systems that don’t have Outlook on them. That one made sense. Word, it’s not as clear. You give up something when you move to Ajax, vs. a rich client-user interface. So we’ll run through, and see where it makes sense.

There are so many Web 2.0 companies out there doing so many cool things without even a semblance of a reliable business model. The above response is a clear indication that MS is actively look at these cool new ways of doing things. I suspect MS will strike when the time is right, and destroy a bunch of these startups in one sweep unless of course a new Google is born out of one of them!