Tuesday 28 February 2012

Global Service Jam - 2012

The weekend of Feb 26th, 2012 Thoughtworks hosted the Global Service Jam @ Bangalore,  Pune and Gurgaon. 

Being part of the organizing team at the Gurgaon event, I thought I'll share our experiences about this new and rather unique event.


What is Global Service Jam (GSJ) all about?
GSJ is a event held globally on an annual basis (actually this is just their 2nd year) which aims to build upon the concept of service design and give the participants a real world flavor of this concept. GSJ is not a conference and neither is it meant only for techies, for most of us in the IT space service tends to webservices; Service Design is much bigger and better. 


What is Service Design?
Service Design (my borrowed perspective) is a concept that guides and facilitates the management of resources in such a manner that provides a unique and satisfying experience to the consumers of a service. View the better explanation.


What or who is the driving force behind GSJ?
GSJ is run and promoted as a non-profit volunteer activity. The parent organization has virtually no staff and budget. They are just driven to spread the message and get your creative juices flowing.


Ok!!!...but what is this jam sham business???
Well to put this simply you get a group of motivated people with diverse backgrounds and divide them into teams, then you give them a (abstract) theme and 48 hours to brainstorm and prototype a real-life service around the theme. Jammers (aka. participants) are expected to experiment, innovate and cooperate all along the way.


Who would be interested in something like that??
26 in Gurgaon, 80 odd in Bangalore, and 30 odd in Pune. They were furniture designers, Phd scholars, design specialists, product managers, students and even retired individuals. Sadly Thoughtworkers (atleast from Gurgaon) were in short attendance.


Hmmm.. In that case I bet the prizes must have been really Exciting!!
Yes, if you think that interacting with people from different spheres of life to imagine and create innovative solutions and expanding your mental capabilities is worth anything.


What was the outcome?

Day 1 

We started the event in the evening with a keynote address where we focussed on educating the participants on the GSJ, basic concepts of Service Design, and some basic rules of he game. We figured that the since we as organizers were new to the concept we needed to educate the participants. Ice breaker. We planned a fun ice breaker to get the Jammers into the groove and it worked out really well (some people still insist on calling me Just-Mast Jagbir). 
The Jammers were then divided into 3 teams of 8-9, we wanted to keep the numbers high on each team to ensure that the teams could work even if some people opted out. Since this was a first of its kind in India we were not really sure about its uptake till the end. The theme & the ideas This years theme was "Hidden Treasure" and after the initial brainstorming sessions each of the teams were asked to share their ideas with the entire group. The ideas were really impressive and so was the approach taken by the teams to determine them. We ended day 1 here to come back and start afresh. 

Day 2

As mentioned earlier we (organizers) were a little worried about the turnout after the teams had experienced the initial brainstorming sessions. However, response from the Jammers was fantastic and our eyes and hearts brightened with the energy they brought along. We started the day with a small presentation on what was expected from the teams and shared the Business Model Canvas and the prototyping methods to help guide them. We also shared the various concepts from the previous years to help them understand the concept development and prototyping aspects. To our benefit showing the previous years concepts also served as a nice break for the participants. Again the energy and dedication of the Jammers was amazing through out the day and this was visible in their outputs.

Day 3

I had planned to skip the event on Sunday (the wife had a long list of chores lined up) but the enthusiasm of the participants was infectious and I was tempted to see the shape their ideas took. The teams had a bit of a mad dash in the end to finish their prototypes but they just about made it in the end. The quality of their ideas was reflected in their prototypes as well and they once again managed to leave us spell bound. 

To sum it up we loved the energy, enthusiasm, cooperative attitude, excellent quality ideas and their execution. We learnt, we laughed, we mingled,and were left asking for more.... 

 View final presentations here.

Saturday 25 February 2012

The 'clouds end' but the magic doesn't ...

The trip to Clouds End, Mussoorie was a long awaited one for me and the Mrs. We hadn't been on a getaway for sometime and the long weekend was too hard to resist.
Sharing some of our bitter-sweet experiences from the trip.

The hard facts:

- How far is it? - Mussoorie is roughly 280 kms from Delhi. And clouds end is around 10 kms from Mussoorie.
- How to get there from Delhi? - The route we took is Delhi - Modi Nagar - Meerut - Muzzafarnagar - Rorkee - Dehradun - Mussoorie.
- Where did we stay? - Clouds End forest resort.

The sweetness of it:
The Snowies


The property - The best part about Clouds End forest resort is its location. Its located on a 400 acre forested area which is around 10 kms from the (Mussoorie) city center. The property is a refurbished villa from the colonial era and is ideally located with a clear view of the snow capped himalayan peaks.



Sunrise
The views & sounds - The views from almost any place were breathtaking the best being the views of the snow capped peaks, the Sunrise and Sunset. One of the interesting facts that we learnt on the trip is that the South facing side of a mountain is always more barren than the North facing one. The reason for this phenomenon is that the south facing side tends to get more direct sun hence less hummidity (and less germination) hence less growth. Whereas the North facing side gets less SunThe peace and quiet of the hills with the distant (and not so distant) calls of various animals is something that still brings a easy calm to yours truly.


View of the barren & the lush green
The People - In my experience the people you interact with on the hills (locals not outsiders) are mild mannered and willing to go that extra mile to help you. I just love that about them and hope that we city dwellers don't (also) pollute this aspect of life at the hills.
The trek - There is a wonderful trek from the resort to the adjoining hill (with a temple on its peak) which gives a closer and awesomer view of the snow capped beauties. Although the view in the end is the best the fun is in the journey to the top especially since we took a slightly offbeat path to the peak which went through the less traveled paths with amazing views on the way. The wife had a field day clicking snaps and ran the darn camera out of battery.
The adorable puppies - There were these adorable puppies at the resort (around 8 weeks old) and being a dog lover I was thrilled. I've always wanted to own a pet but it'd be criminal considering that we spend most of the day at work and live in a apartment (with no open spaces).
The Naughty One
What was unique about this particular breed was their aggressive behavior with each other and also how their mother handled them. I have seen quite a few interactions between these animals but have never seen them play with such an aggressive intent. It was interesting to experience this trait which seems unique to this breed.

The bitterness:

The roads - The roads in our country are bound to feature in this section and the road to Mussorie is no exception. The only stretch that is worth anything is the one between Meerut and Muzzafarnagar, which provides a much needed breather. So if you are travelling make sure that you start early so that you are not pressed for time.

The jumping jack - The only other minor sore point were the kids of a couple residing in the room directly above ours. They seemed to be practicing for the 100 mtr dash at the Olympics while simultaneously practicing for the long jump event.

Side attractions:

This was my first real visit to Dehradun (the earlier visits were too far back) and I was amazed at the numerous schools and colleges that throng the relatively small town and the  vibrancy the young crowd brings to the equation. Also, given the population of youngsters it wasn't really surprising to find the large bouquet of brands (clothing, accessories, financial institutions, automobiles etc) lining up the congested lanes that criss-cross the city.


Thats all for now....more to follow soon....

Tuesday 21 February 2012

My First....My Preciousss

I am one of those people who never really took to blogging, infact I am one of those who actually mocked the concept when I first learnt about it and for a significant period of time afterwards.

So what am I doing here you ask???
Well after having thought long and hard about this I realized that I need to have good reasons to start blogging, and mine are:

Why I decided to start?
- To Capture my experiences, thoughts and opinions for my own self.... rather than anyone else. So that I can relive them at sometime.
- To Improve my writing skills and develop the ability to put my thoughts in a sensible congruent manner.
- To Discover and experiment with something new, something that brings me out of my comfort zone. (like most men im not very good at sharing stuff)
- To Make effective use of the 3 hrs I spend each day travelling to and from work.

 Once I have got this sorted out I need to figure out what to blog about and here are some of the things I thought I could write about:
- Work life balance
- Travel
- Sports
- Funny incidents from life & relationships
- Software project management and my experiences with Agile project execution.

 Challenges to overcome in this journey:
- Being regular
- Being clear and concise
- Writing with passion & purpose