iCamp - I for Innovation

The much awaited iCamp held on Feb 23, 08 was quite a success. This was my second barcamp after the KAMP. And without a doubt, I have become addicted to these unconferences for the sheer simplicity, openness and the felxibility it provides.

The topics were very interesting ranging from What is innovation to How to innovate and connecting humanitarian and spirituality to innovation.

An interesting session on Innovation in MBA education was quite interseting and offline discussions on this topic extending to how the scope can be scaled to introducing innovation at all education levels and not restricting this to just MBAs.

Another interesting fact that emerged was that the topics although revolved around IT largely, quite an amount of examples were drawn from non-IT fields too and this did not limit to just products but to addressing to hot topics like Bangalore traffic jams. Kalyan's topic touched this to a large extenct and so was Henry's presentation.

With a good number of enthusiasts, the entire session was very interactive with a zero dull moment throughout the day.

The session cocluded with Knowledge Cafe with round table discussion over coffee, jelabis and samosa on "Does Process help or hurt innovation". The result was quite interesting that a large amount of campers felt that process is very much required however without a mandate or restriction.

Thanks Raj for the Knowledge Cafe concept, now the campers look forward to the K-cafe as much as they look forward to barcamps I am sure.


My key learning from the camp are:

1. Ideation is a process while Innovation is a Practice - Ideation is talk while innovation is walk - So talk the walk is a must for an innovation to take place.

2. Innovation can draw inspiration from all walks of life - Observe, learn, think and implement based on the context.

3. All innovations need not be radical - even a small change in the experience and the way we do things better could be a great innovation

4. Innovation should be introduced at student life - the earlier the better (Catch them young...)

Thanks Prakash for initiating, planning and successfully conducting the iCamp. Missed Navneet in the entire camp.

Relevant Education Curriculum

The other day, met a few friends from Foundation and was discussing relevance of certain subjects and topics at the school. Incidentally, came across Kenny Jacob's (http://www.kenneyjacob.com) website and found a similar topic on his page too.

Relevance of certain subjects and topics has always been a prime discussion in the education field. While some of us have been fighting for introducing more relevant subjects like life skills at the school level, some conservatives still fight it out for the traditional methods. While per Se, I am not against the traditional methods, I would also like to see introduction of certain life skill topics like public speaking, leadership skills, Analysis as against by-heart etc. Also, certain parameters on which a student is tested also looks outdated to me (e.g: handwriting!). How important is it for a student to be judged on handwriting and get lower scores coz of this? Knowledge is knowledge whether the student can write it out or say it out.

A serious thinking needs to be done on this and a awareness needs to be created at the schools and college levels on relevance and irrelevance of certain subjects at the school and college levels. Also, the time has now come to involve industry specialists in designing the course wears and curriculum for the students.

More thoughts on this is welcome please.

Pets - Do I like them?

If someone asked me this question even as recent as 3 months ago, my answer would be "Ye, but at the zoo". But my answer now stands changed and thanks to Vittoo.

I first saw Vittoo (Vittala is his full name) on September 30, 07, it was really love at first sight. He was just so roly poly and adorable, looked so very helpless and his eyes kept saying "I love you too, take me home". But then we (me and Shyam) wanted to make up our minds before we really wanted to make the decision of brining him home. So we took time and you wont beleive, we were already missing him in the next 2 days. God! it was like bitten by love bug and all we wanted to do was to just go and bring him home.

Sanju (my daughter) went a step ahead and stared sheding tears like never before. As she is close to Shyam, she went and told him that we should not think too much and just go and bring Vittoo home. But there were other issues like, we were just shifting our house which means so much work and also we were in an apartment which didnt allow pets. But the love bug was simply too much to handle. We wanted to bring him after Oct 15, after we shifted to our new house, but this boy came on Oct 5 itself and we sneaked him inside the apartment without the notice of the president and others in the building (hehe).

And that is how he came home and like they say, rest is history. Its about 2 months he has come and we wonder how did we live without him all these days????