I got married this year (2016) on Feb-14 to a girl who is full of energy, grit, perseverance and passion. I believed in here for many things and of which her humble nature and family aspects are the one's that made me close to her. Apart from this, the other reason is that her home is just 6KM away from my home. 

However, this is not the point of this post. When we went out to select a personal wedding invitation for our friends, she was not quite happy with the designs. Trust me, the designs for personal wedding invitations in India have not changed in the last 5+ years. 

So, I thought, I should give her a surprise. I took help from my parents and sister, googled a bit and then designed a personal wedding invitation that she could use to invite her friends to our wedding. 

My sister and I both together have HAND-MADE 60 WEDDING CARDS. Here are a few pics from them.

What have I learned from this experience:

With a tight schedule of 30 days before the wedding, it was a challenge even to go search and buy an Indian Hindu wedding card. Every wedding card selling shop had close to 3000 designs for our budget. Apart from this, selecting a personal wedding card is another challenge. 

I have won quite a few drawing competitions and "story telling with sketches" competitions since my childhood. So, I picked up the idea to design a wedding invitation and give it as a surprise for her. 

Now, that's a fantastic idea. However, soon it became a kind of weight on my head with going to the office, coming back home and going for shopping, managing financials from my end and all of this.

2 days later and after a lot of searches online, I got into a belief that this is next to impossible. However, my mom encouraged me saying that this is indeed a wonderful idea and I should give it a try. 2 more days from then, I could finalize the design with the help from my mom. 

Right after this, there stood another challenge. What colors should we pick up? Where to buy the material from and how to organize all of this. I went around the city a few items before I could get the needed gloss color sheets and then proceeding to make the card 100% hand-made. 

This is what I call it as perseverance and love of finishing a work that we pick in hand. Though there has been a purpose and motivation, it was not until that I decided to make it finish I could not find the right path. Always remember, right attitude and mindset is the pre-requisite for a task to get finished.

With just this and nothing else, I started my task and then researched, designed and developed my idea. Thank you for reading this. All the very best. Do post your comments.

I think it’s not just right to talk about code and the software practices alone. There is more to this what makes the earlier two things go on and succeed. They are skills of different kind. I know that you guys would have guessed it by now – the behavior skills.

(Originally published on my tech talks blog in 2014. Moving this here so that all my articles get attached to www.yesprasad.com)

Behavior skills in its own is a very vast subject and more importantly it cannot be taught with a chapter in the book for every situation. However, we can make ourselves go through few leanings and stitch them with our previous experience and make ourselves ready for the best and the worst. And every time, it’s the act as per the situation that makes us more convenient and others in the situation more comfortable. So, let’s jump in, but where shall we start? I have the answer!!! Trust me and follow me here.

The first and the foremost of the Behavior skills (BS) is conversing. I somehow don’t want to take the word communication right away and right here, because it’s again a big topic on its own. When we are at a comfortable place, we will start using the word communication. Conversing is between two or more people and in general on a specific topic. So as far as the subject is concerned it’s easy for everyone in the group. However, for the subject to take a route where it realizes (I dislike the word ends-up, because it’s like a narrow mind thought)to become a fruitful discussion is when everyone puts in their thoughts on the subject matter.

But what it takes to make everyone their thought? It’s all about a simple practice of listening to the one who is talking/speaking and the rest giving the full levels of dedication to the one talking. This makes the complete circle of conversing. Yes, A complete life cycle of conversation (sounds pretty similar to SDLC?).

So, we shall put a full stop for this point here and come back with a new line in the next post. Thus, it’s very important that we listen to someone who is talking in the group while we are in discussing, because you might never know that a person who hasn’t spoke at all has a better idea than the rest of the team. See you soon!

Originally published on my LinkedIn profile on July-14-2014 after Germany has won the world cup.
Ahaaa....!!! The world has just witnessed an exemplary tournament. The FIFA 2014 world cup has just ended in Brasil. Firstly, Thank you Brasil for making it go in such a great and smooth manner. Moving on lets congratulate Germany for winning the Cup for the 4th time and Argentina for making it to the finals after 24 years.
After witnessing a great performance and supporting the great teams in this tournament, we should not leave as is. Every team has taught us so much on how to perform, how to over come and how to build and deliver in demanding situations. However, the most learning's are taken from the team that makes to the top.
So, what exactly has the German team taught us?

1. Strong understanding of vision.
After tasting their lowest in performance, Germany has revamped their thoughts and have come up with a clear vision. A vision that defines not just their target but their weaknesses and how they will have to work on them and come out of it stronger.

2. Common goal.
If Vision is only of the coach, it will never be realized. It is a vision of a few it will never be full. It can of Germany, the vision was seeded in everyone's soul and not just in their timelines.

3. Continuous Innovation.
Defining a Vision doesn't help anything but wasting time and thoughts. What Germany did in the last 10-15 years was setting up camps every where in their country and nurturing talent and bringing the best from every part of the Deutsche land. Every time a team won, they took notes of the good and the better from that teams, even if they are the smallest teams.
4. Staying focused and working hard.
More important than finding talent is to tune them to stay focused and working hard to stay fit and deliver to the situation.

5. Staying Flexible.
There were no fixed places in the team's play and formations. Though they followed the standard patterns and put them up on the charts before the match, the members were quick to take decisions based on the situation. Thus they played for the game than playing for a format.

6. Executing as a team and execute in excellence.
Unlike many other teams, Germany was always been seen as a players in the team than players for the team. It was not like Messi for Argentina, Neymer for Brasil or Robben for Netherlands. Every time and in every match there was a new name who scored the goal. Even Klose and Muller were always been members of the team than super stars running the team. Thus everyone could play every other person's role. This meant that the team is never deprived of quality of service from its men. This made sure that Germany delivered it in excellence almost always.

In one of my appraisal cycles, it was time for feedback from my manager. He asked me

"Prasad, do you have any questions? So that I will answer them before we proceed to the feedback"

I said "Yes" and I continued with my question. It was like this.

"What do you think is the biggest trait that one should carry to be successful even if he/she fails sometime in their life?"

I had put the question without any pauses. My manager took a deep breath, smiled at me and he started off.

He questioned me. "Do you get depressed if you fail?"

I answered him promptly with a "NO" and added that "I will think about what were those factors that made me fail."

He smiled again and said "Then, you have the eligibility to ask this question." and he continued. "It's a very strong question that has to be visited very day and you should make it a habit to think about this question every day to push your limits beyond your capacity."

and he warned me " and its not that easy." "Prasad, everyone who knows how to use a computer can write some piece of code. Even if it is a junk and not a penny worth. He/she can still Google up and write the code, yet all that it takes to make something work and work in a desired way is the ability to adapt."

"There are many institutes that teach technical things. There are many websites that give you line by line example on how to use a library or a dll, yet it is your inbuilt or your learned skill from your experience that makes you stand apart from the rest."

"All that you need to be successful is to be adaptable to the situation. Question what is it that the user of the application that you are building is looking for. Put your mind and question yourself, what if you are the user of the application. Is it easy for you to use it? Is it helping you to finish your work at ease or is it costing you more time?"

"You should be like a solider on the filed. getting adapted to every situation and coming out of that with thought to success"

After this, he said we are done with this meet. There was no feedback session that day. I could read my manager's eyes. They were filled with happiness and he was feeling so much excited about this fruitful topic.

Image:http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/45/ac/ba/45acbacaeee71649d58de840a7d73e7e.jpg

Passion  and Compassion - a new way to lead your life for an all round development

Passion
- An intense desire or enthusiasm for something.
- A thing arousing great enthusiasm.

Compassion
- Understanding
- caring for someone/something
- Concern for something/someone

Passion and Compassion when put together will bring the best in you.
In the current lifestyle and working environments, Passion and Compassion should go hand in hand for you to achieve success.
Many of us have used the word Compassion many a times but in one particular context - that is - feeling of love/concern/empathy for someone who is in suffering.
However, Compassion has a whole new meaning in the present lifestyle that we lead - where work life balance and performance delivery in so important for every individual.
Passion is what drives you to learn and acquire new knowledge whereas Compassion is what that will drive you to share the knowledge that you acquired.

Sharing knowledge has become an important aspect of everyone's personal and professional lives. Being Compassionate in life will make you get loved by everyone around you.
They feel happy to share their emotions and they feel safe sharing their thoughts with you. While being Compassionate at office will help you earn - 'the go to person' tag for suggestions and advises. In a long run this will make you a trustworthy friend/colleague and people look up to as someone whom they can take as an idol.

I am passionate and compassionate and becoming a compassionate person in office. What about you? Share your thoughts here! Thank you!

All human beings are entrepreneurs. When we were in caves, we were self-employed.... finding our food and feeding ourselves. That's where human history began. As civilizations came, we suppressed it. 

-Muhammad Yunus, Nobel peace prize winner and microfinance pioneer.

Everyone of us are born entrepreneurs. As the quote goes, "Necessity is the mother of every invention", in the same way, we have been entrepreneurs day in and day out. At this moment, "this moment", as you read through my article here, you are an entrepreneur. You and me are investing our time to see what new you can learn from this piece of writing.

2000 AD, I finished my class 8 and was about to enter my summer vacation. I was part of a charity trust that use to run an old age home. Charity means, collecting money from individuals. This was the common norm back in those days when I was in school. So, all that we as school students had to do was go from door to door and collect money from 20 people. Once the 20 rows sheet are done, we can go ahead and get one more or we can enjoy our summer holidays. (A typical British style christian missionary which was attached to our Christian school).

I heard it from my family members that it is common for school and college going students to work past time in grocery stores, ice cream parlours, McDonalds and other such places during their summer vacations so that they know about the value of money and how to earn money for living.

That's it! I found an idea to become an entrepreneur! I bought a book that has home made remedies for few of the things that we need everyday at home. I went through the book taking help from my mom a few times and decided on making "Washing powder" at home. Washing powder from big MNCs were not really bought by Indians. So, I took help from my mom and my aunt - bought the raw materials from a general bazar at Secunderabad, mixed them all at home and sold 1KG for 10 Indian rupees, when "Nirma washing powder", the household name of India, was sold at somewhere at 12-16 per KG.

Because, my mom had guided me so much in this, our quality of the product made sure we had return customers! At the end of the 2 months summer vacation, I made a good fortune. I donated a piece of my fortune to the trust and the rest I have clubbed it with my father's savings to buy myself a new bicycle.

I became an entrepreneur at the age of 12! in the year 2000, when Y2K scared the world and many of the youth in west found new jobs in IT and many of the investors lost their fortunes to it.