I had to go to India in late January to attend religious rituals after my elder sister passed away unexpectedly. It is customary in India to complete the cremation within a few hours of death, the origins of which have to do with the high temperatures and lack of easy access to cooling technologies. This has changed in recent years. Even now, generally, cremation is delayed only for a few important reasons, one of the most important one has to do with who, according to our religion, should carry out the last rites and how far they have to travel. In my sister’s case, there were no compelling reasons to delay the cremation because the person to carry out the last rite was her brother in law, who was right there. Unfortunately, there was another death in the family during my stay there and I participated in the cremation.

For Hindu Brahmins, there is a fairly long list of religious rituals that are carried out over 13 days after the death of a person. Nowadays there is an abridged version that go on from 9th to 13th day, so I was able to go and participate in these. I learned a lot by participating in these events thanks to the priest’s explanations as things were performed. During these days relatives join, recall past memories and participate in the various rituals. These rituals revolve around donation to some of the Brahmins, offering food to the soul of the dead person and a lot of chanting of mantras, all of which is supposed to help the soul rest in peace. Going into further details is daunting and I will leave it there.

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One of the topics that keeps coming back when I meet my CIO colleagues is “why are you still doing app development?” The rationale is that it is unsustainable and that there are much cheaper alternatives, so it doesn’t make sense. I have a different view point and I am sure that the Wellesley community members will agree that what we have been able to do in the past few years have been tremendously helpful to them. I briefly want to describe the rationale and provide two of the most recent examples though we have a lot I can talk about…

We are pretty strategic about choosing to write an app. By the way we are not talking about Mobile app, but just a plain old web app. We get requests, or more often, we generate ideas that result in an app. The process is to ask the faculty member of staff interested in an app to put in a request and we evaluate whether an app exists out in the world that will satisfy the request and whether it is something that we can support. If it does, we get the cost estimate. If it doesn’t exist or if we feel we can build it cheaper, we will do it. We always go into it as “forever beta”, meaning, “don’t expect a completed product, but we will incrementally add features” and are also not afraid to toss it out if an alternative emerges after a few years. We have adopted bootstrap, so our apps are reasonably responsive. Simple, right?

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This is a good time to reflect on 2017, a memorable year. I always think about these man made arbitrary boundaries such as weekends and end of the year which influences how one feels. We all get excited on Friday about the next two days and the same way we look forward to a new year during the last few days of December. And we make New Year’s resolutions which have a tremendously high failure rates.

In this piece titled “The Only Way to Keep Your Resolutions“, the author says “By Jan. 8, some 25 percent of resolutions have fallen by the wayside.” The author makes an argument that keeping up resolutions requires willpower and self-control which are extremely hard. Instead he proposes that we cultivate social emotions. “In nudging the mind to be more patient and more selfless, they benefit everyone whom our decisions impact, including our own future selves. In short, they give us not only grit but also grace.” As a skeptic of the typical New Year’s resolutions, this sounds like a plan to me!

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I was on a flight to Chicago to attend Workday Rising, the annual conference of Workday. Whenever I get on a flight, some of my early travels always run through my mind.

I distinctly remember my very first flight out of Colombo to Trichy in South India. It was in 1972, when I was coming to India for my “higher studies”. It was all so strange and I had no idea what to do and followed whatever the person next to me was doing. They gave a hot towel, which my neighbor didn’t want (clever guy). By the time I figured out what the others were doing, it was no longer hot. I was so nervous that I forgot to look out and enjoy the take off etc., which are typically the thrills of a first flight.  Of course, the technology of flights themselves never crossed my mind until later.

The next one was my flight in 1978 to come to the US. Another nervous and anxious flight. I was very depressed to be leaving my family back home. All the outwardly brave statements I made to friends and family about going to the US and not coming back for years turned into an outright scare. I took a Swissair flight because it was the cheapest at that time. Everything smelled strange, including the smoke from cigarettes in such a confined space. (more…)

It must be pretty hard to be a senior executive at Google, Facebook or Twitter. Though their technologies are predominantly used in interesting and positive ways, increasingly they have become the communication platform for terrorists and many other illegal activities. In the rush to claim victory for having millions and millions of users and monetize that for billions and billions of dollars, these companies have put many important matters in the back burner – such as developing strong acceptable use policies, detection and containment of illegal activities.

Many of these issues are hard and cumbersome, but it is not clear whether these companies even feel it is their obligation to worry about them or whether we should even expect them to. The recent revelations that these platforms played an important role in the interference by Russia in the US elections is serious enough to ask hard questions about what are their obligations. They all tout the use of new technologies to improve user experience everyday, while hiding the fact that they are doing it primarily to boost their profits. I understand that they are in the business of making money, but why are they not using these new technologies also to detect and prevent illegal activities?

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