Thought Stream

• Google Docs Bar - Companion for Firefox
  A cool new plugin to drag and drop office files onto Google Docs.
  (tags: firefox google extension googledocs extensions docs plugins tools)

Note: This post was originally set to be published in October 2007.

This past October I had the pleasure of attending a course on Venture Capital at the Indian School of Business (ISB). The six day course served as much as a refresher in finance for me as an opportunity to expand my understanding of the current business environment in India - of course, the networking opportunity was also exceptional.

A World Class Facility

I’ve been on several college campuses in India, but none quite compares to the ‘island’ that is ISB. Built about seven years ago, and with as little government intervention as is possible in India, the 260 acre campus is walled off from the rest of Greater Hyderabad. Inside these walls is a fully contained academic campus, including student, faculty, and staff residences. The place has a resort like quality, but it is clearly a temple to modern management as well. Those of us who were students of executive education classes were provided with excellent accommodations at the hotel located inside the gates of the campus. We also had superb dining at the executive cafe. The classrooms, at least those for executive education, are on par with the best amphitheater style classrooms that I’ve seen at the leading American institutions. We had very long days, nights during the class [which was surprisingly rigorous] and we always felt attended to. Even the smallest of requests were fulfilled quickly. For that, the staff at ISB should be commended. [Above picture is from the entrance of the library].

A World Class Education

The VC course was taught by to professors from the London School of Business [LSB], John Mullins and Antony Ross. Both were exceptional, and employed the classic case study method that is the hallmark of many western business schools. ISB was founded on the premise of becoming a globally recognized leader in management education and research. This is reflected in the schools affiliations with LSB, University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, and Northwestern University’s Kellogg School. [UPDATE: It looks like that global focus is paying dividends, as ISB has just received a Top 20 ranking by the Financial Times :link to Rashmi Bansal’s story]. While I didn’t get a chance to sit in on the regular courses at ISB, I did have an opportunity to meet with a professor friend who left the United States to join the faculty at ISB. He reiterated the deep focus on establishing the standard bearer for management education in India.

A great experience

The last thing that most people think of when planning a vacation is adding long nights and long days of financial case study into the mix. After spending time at ISB back in October, having the chance to meet some fascinating people, and getting polished on the fundamentals of structured finance, I’m convinced it was the best part of my month in India!

There is some buzz around the announcement of Prologue, Automattic’s - the makers of Wordpress - new ‘group twitter’ application. It seems to be more of a presence tool than anything else:

We’re fans of Twitter around here, in fact many Automatticians have accounts, but while the format appealed to us it really just whetted our appetite for something more, like a way for each of us to share short messages about what we’re doing or working on internally, or private messages between groups of folks.

As you can see on my blog below, I do use twitter from time to time, but I haven’t really found it to be too useful for a business setting. Prologue, however, may open up the possibilities to improve group interaction when dealing with people in disparate settings. There are more than a few people who have already compared Prologue to 37Signals’ Basecamp. I think Basecamp is a more rigid, traditional project management application, but I can see some similarities here.

Read more here.

• Save RTI Campaign - Donation Appeal
  Best way to stop corruption in India, give’em this note.
  (tags: india corruption rupee anti-corruption)

In previous posts, I’ve mentioned the online Mindmapping tool MindMeister. The developer continues to update his product, recently adding Google Gears capability - allowing MindMeister to be taken offline - among other things. The most recent developments are tied to extending access via widgets. This is really cool:

So, we’ve taken that feedback very seriously and now are proud to give you not one, not two - but three new versions of Geistesblitz, for Yahoo! Widgets, iGoogle and the iPhone. We hope this will make everybody happy!

Read more about it here.

I especially like the ability to send quick thoughts to a default mindmap via my iGoogle home page. I continue to use mindmapping to churn through ideas and concepts that need further development, and now I can quickly send snippets to MindMeister without having to log in and add a node. It is certainly getting easier and easier to function on the cloud.

I try not to interject too much politics onto this weblog - and I will definitely steer clear of the election here in America - but every once in a while someone posts insightful commentary on the bewildering stupidity of Indian politics, such as this:

India is a democracy, but according to the Supreme Court it’s less democratic than you might think. The justices recently shot down a challenge to Indira Gandhi’s 1970s-era ploy to stamp her economic policies on the country in perpetuity. At issue: Does the word “socialism” belong in the Indian Constitution? And is every political party required to be socialist even if such a requirement is antithetical to free speech?

Read the entire post here.  Definitely worth checking out.

• Slice: A List of Regional Pizza Styles
  A very important guide for the discriminating pizza fan.
  (tags: food pizza reference usa travel slice guide cooking)

• Writing a Book in Google Docs
  I’m starting to use the cloud more and more myself. This is a good read on how to be productive with Google Docs on the cloud.
  (tags: google writing googledocs books collaboration tips web2.0 howto)

• Web Worker Daily » Finding Unlimited Tech Support Fast «
  Ok, this is an interesting angle on Indian outsourcing…
  (tags: india outsourcing personal)

• Two AI Pioneers. Two Bizarre Suicides. What Really Happened?
  Worth reading
  (tags: ai technology wired science history interesting culture)
• HEMA - online winkelen
  Cool…
  (tags: flash animation fun design inspiration webdesign advertising cool)