Heres wishing all a very Happy New Year. Hope you had a restful and relaxing holiday break. Now it is time to go on the offense once again.

2007 just flew past too quickly. 2008 promises to be an exciting year. With the Beijing Olympics, the Elections and, of course, our product release (since we are operating under a cloak of secrecy, I am not able to talk more about it here. All I can say at this point is that we will be revealing it at http://buildtheweb.org) there is a lot to look forward to.

The year has certainly begun with good tidings:

• InfoWorld documents Sun's comeback as "Sun's transition from leader to laggard and back to contender has been very painful ... But the numbers -- four profitable quarters in a row plus record margins -- as well as a growing list of wins, point to a company on the upswing."  
• NetBeans 6.0 got a positive review from Andrew Binstock. Titled "NetBeans 6.0: Cooking at Last", he feels that NetBeans 6.0 is an exceptional release because of Sun’s focus on the most important part of the platform – the coding and editing experience. “It is now in a position to take users away from Eclipse and other IDEs,” he says.
• Project SunSPOT Development Kit, a battery-operated platform for development of radio-controlled sensor networks, robotics, and personal consumer electronics, is listed as one of InfoWorld's must-have gadgets.
  

I spent this last weekend at an alumni reunion - IIT 2007 Global Conference. It was a fantastic event - with over 4000 people (including spouses and children) in attendance at the Santa Clara Convention Center. The attendees bonded on their interest in technology and how it can transform the world. The program featured a who's who in technorati and glitterati.

Jeff Immelt gave the opening keynote. He noted that GE employs 1500 IIT graduates. He mentioned that GE's $170b revenues come from:
    o Infrastructure
    o Emerging Markets
    o Environmental Technologies
    o Demographics - focus on Healthcare
    o Digital Connections
He urged the audience to look at four vectors when considering what it will take to be a technical leader in the industry:
    o Economics of scarcity (eg. consumption of energy is surpassing availability and production)
    o Reshaping financials (eg. 70% of the healthcare dollar is being spent in diagnostics)
    o Simplification (Using IT to improve workflow)
    o Globalization (When building product, always think about the world market)
He mentioned a personal incident during his recent visit to India. He was reading Forbes magazine on the plane and it listed India's billionares. He thought he would impress his wife and turned to her and said, "You know, I do business with these guys - Premji, Ambani and Birla". It backfired when she responded, "What are you feeling so good about. I don't see you on any billionare list". He concluded saying that more important than money, title or power is to build something.

I tried to catch sessions on topics that I would not normally encounter on a day-to-day basis - such as energy strategies for the future.

Senator Hillary Clinton had a keynote session later in the day on Friday. Unfortunately, she could not appear in person. She tried to cover it up saying, "It is appropriate that I appear via a satellite feed to a conference that is focused on transforming the world through technology."  

Arun Sarin, CEO of Vodafone, an alumnus of IIT Bombay, gave the keynote on Saturday. Vodafone has a $200b market cap and has 40% margins. He touched on three topics in his talk:

• IIT and leadership. He started his talk by kicking the audience in their pants! He talked about the importance of leadership and the resulting ability to do good to others. He was disappointed, however, in not seeing sufficient people rising to the rank of CEO. He noted Rajat Gupta, Umang Gupta, Ujjal Kohli    and Suhas Patil as the exceptions. The important tenets, he said, are to be Strategic - have a clear view of what you want to accomplish; Operational - the ability to set goals and meet goals and People - the ability to make ordinary people do extraordinary things
• Communications. He sees a trend in services convergence - where providers are bringing their experience in internet and entertainment to the mobile world.
• Globalization. He talked about Vodafone's recent acquisition of Hutch - a large mobile provider in India. Since he was competing with other, large, Indian players, he talked a bit about his experiences in doing business with India. He was disappointed, he said, that things happened outside the normal business processes to influence the decisions. In order for India to succeed it needs Transparency, Infrastructure, Capital and Talent.
  

I attended a session on Harnessing Creativity that had Indian Poet Javed Akthar, Author Chitra Bannerjee, Film Director Shekhar Kapur, Academy Award winner Venkat Krishnamurthy on the panel. It was a fascinating to hear the source of creativity for these extremely talented folks. 



I also attended a Nobel Laureates Panel with Arno Penzias and George Smoot. The panel was moderated by Alex Filippenko of UC Berkeley. They talked about the State of Cosmology. In fact, our knowledge of the Universe is only on the 4% that we know - made from protons and neutrons.

The evening concluded with a scintiallating musical concert from the doyens of Indian Classical music, including vocals by Pandit Jasraj, flute by Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia, Mandolin by U Srinivas and percussions by Vijay Ghate (tabla), Vikku Vinayakaram (ghatam) and Selvaganesh (kanjira). Through poetry and sound they brought out the true meaning of India's national flag.

I have not blogged over the past several weeks because we (my family and I) were travelling on vacation to several cities including New York, London, Delhi, Chennai and Bangalore. We spent not more than four days per city - making it quite hectic. Given the numerous flight connections and airport transfers that we had to make, I was apprehensive on whether we would pull it off without any glitches - especially considering that there were five of us travelling in lock step. In the end everything worked perfectily and we got to see a wide range of people, cultures, architectures, diets and flora.

A highlight of the trip was our visit to Rashtrapati Bhavan (the home of the President) in New Delhi. Owing to tight security,
we were not allowed to take our cameras inside the house. So, I could only take pictures from the outside. With its breathtaking architecture, immaculate lawns and perfectly symmetrical structures, these pictures are quite stunning. I have included two of them here. One (on the right) is the Jaipur Column in the front of the building and the other is the view of the Rashtrapati Bhavan itself from the other side of the gate.

































We were indeed priviledged and honored to be able to meet the President of India, Dr. Abdul Kalam, during our visit. The picture below (which includes the extended family) was taken by the official photographer.




His business card - which you can see in the picture being held by my daughter (in blue) and neice(in red) reads,
                                            Learning gives creativity
                                            Creativity leads to thinking,
                                            Thinking provides knowledge
                                            Knowledge makes you great.

I had the opportunity to present a proposal to Dr. Kalam. He is currently evaluating it and said that he will get back to me. I will write about the proposal here once it gets some traction.

I learned earlier today that my friend, Dr. Balachander's Krishnamurthy's (known as Bala) book on "Internet Measurement : Infrastructure, Traffic and Applications" will soon be available. In a move that touched me immensely, Bala has dedicated his book to my late father-in-law, Mr. Janakiraman Gowrikanthan. JG, as he was known to everyone, was an icon in Chennai, India. He passed away in April 2003. He was a Chartered Accountant by profession. He was, however, an expert on a wide range of topics - ranging from Astrology to Law. He had such a keen sense for the intricacies in legal system that many of Chennai's attorneys would consult him on their legal briefs. Now, he has a book dedicated to him. Thanks, Bala and good luck with your book.