TED talks - first experience

TED talks are simply awesome !! I watched a few last night and found myself glued to my computer screen - a little preview of the ones i watched

Interactive Whiteboard

Johnny Lee is a PhD student who focuses on cheaper ways to bring technology to mainstream users. His presentation focused on the new uses of the Nintendo wII remote. The wII remote is primarily advertised for its motion sensing capabilities but it also has a infrared camera. Using the infrared camera, Lee shows the audience how with a projector and a laptop, one can make an interactive whiteboard. Lee directs the wII remote camera towards the white screen where a multimedia projector is projecting the computer image. Lee then uses a marker than has an infrared LED attached to it to write (throw infrared beam on the screen that is then sensed by the wII remote). The software Lee has written translate the movement of the infrared beam on the white screen to written lines and images on the white screen. This apparatus makes an interactive whiteboard screen.

The Big Internet

Another talk was about the next 5,000 days of the internet. The speaker projects that in the next 5,000 days of the web, every machine on the planet will be connected to what he calls the central machine, "the one." This one machine, or the web, will become very good at knowing you and anticipating your wants and preferences. The futurist believes that in the next 10-15 years, the web will own every bit. No data will be on a separate machine but will be part of the web. With that one thing people will have to give up is their privacy so he believes that things will become much more transparent. Sharing would be the trend because it would increase the overall wealth of information.

The Advent of Computers

One interesting talk was about the invent of the computers. It was quite fascinating for me that the first computer was built to run the calculations for the first atomic and nuclear bomb tests. Von Newmann, who is revered for his contribution in many fields especially the field of computers, along with few of the geniuses of the time built the first computer. The architecture that was used then is still popular today and every computer that there is has the same Von Newmann architecture.

Living Forever

A skinny, long-bearded, hippy British talked about anti-aging and how it is going to be a reality in the future. He talks about why we age and how we can put a stop to it. He considers aging to be a disease and believes it can be cured through multiple therapies.

Avoiding the Next Pandemic

The founder of InSTEDD, Dr. Larry Brilliant, talked about the global pandemics and how they can be stopped from happening. The slogan that he often uses to describe the strategy to fight global pandemics is "early detection, early response." Dr. Brilliant tells the story of the team working in Canada that helped to catch SARS before it spread too far out and saved the world from a major pandemic. Now he believes, Avain Flu or the Bird Flu virus will be the next virus that can cause a pandemic. He has setup InSTEDD with the help of some health care organization as an early warning detection system to identify the spread and trace the roots of a potential pandemic.

Down Sizing is Never Easy

Last week, I conducted a custom-designed training session for a major financial institution in Karachi. The program was titled, "Motivation and Positive Thinking" and the audience was, well, not quite willing to get or even feel motivated. This financial institution is in the middle of a down-sizing (or 'right-sizing' as the management likes to call it) exercise on a mass scale, with hundreds of positions being scaled down or eliminated. My audience members were the victims of this corporate practice that has always received sharp criticism, regardless of where, when, and why it is implemented.

Now, imagine a group of people with an average tenure of 20-plus years at an organization with skill-set not the least bit compatible with the new trends in the industry being 'forced' to jump off the boat and dive into the ocean of uncertainty - and then imagine you being asked to conduct a training workshop for this group on behalf of the HR department to help raise their motivation level !!! Yea, talk about swimming with the sharks !!

After the workshop, I was left to wonder if there is ever going to be a perfect way for organizations to right size. Can it even be properly answered? As commonly understood, right sizing is exercised to reduce costs and help the organization stay afloat in troubled waters. So in a way, it manifests the utilitarian concept of making a decision in the interest of greater number of the people - cutting the fat out of the body to make it more lean and healthy. The fat, however, in this case amounts to dozens and at times hundreds of bread-earners of their families.  It becomes far more troubling when this exercise is being implemented in a country, like ours, where the safety net for those most vulnerable is non-existing and the concept of social welfare has never transcended above the mere rhetoric of the politicians, leaving no hope for a secure transition into a new career once forced out as a result of the down-sizing exercise.