Author: Murali
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Light Rail in Tacoma – simple and convenient
Yesterday, on Apr 16th, we had a wonderful experience with the Light Rail system in Tacoma. I would love for such experience to be more common in Bellevue, WA. I visited Tacoma to have my son attend the Washington State Chess tournament held at the Convention Center.. We were asked to park near the Tacoma…
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Imagination and creativity at display by students at Wenatchee
On Apr 2nd, we attended the Washington State event for Destination Imagination at Wenatchee. 91 teams from across the state were in attendance. I observed fantastic creative work from the students across the state. I was also excited to have my daughter participate in one of the teams. A few teams used “leaf blowers” to construct hover-board for the…
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High school students apply for summer internships
Spark SIP connects aspiring high school kids in the Greater Seattle area to internships with small companies, universities and enthusiastic coaches. This year I joined this program as both an advisor. I am gratified to see several entrepreneurs step up to sponsor projects including Sensoria, AppSheet, 9-mile labs, 6crickets, and Quantyzd. The season has started very well – we…
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Build to last longer
Today I read an excellent article on building weatherproof companies. The author focuses on founder CEOs and advices them to think about longevity through learning fast, strong culture, real board / advisors, an excellent execution cadence, and handling the monsters of the mind. There are two principles I had held high in my work –…
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Investing and Prioritizing for Products without shouts – CSI method
In big companies and small companies, we are always brimming with many ideas but limited time or people to get work done. There are many ways to organize the work list and at many different granularities. A few years back we were in a product planning session with literally 1000+ items to consider. Yes, spreadsheets are great…
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Shape your habits – one small step at a time
We all have habits. We all desire to change habits. Sometimes it is daunting. However if we pause and think through the steps, we can change habits, which can change our character and our lives. Last month I read the Book: The Power of Habit. Charles Duhigg provides several examples to illustrate the science of habit formation…
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Energy, engagement and early success in startups
In the past week, I spoke with founders and co-founders of startup companies. These companies are pursuing projects in diverse areas including internet-of-things, software-as-service for invoices and shipping, robotic games for consumers, novel application of sensors for physical environments, etc. The founders are bright, focused, and exude energy in their missions. They are mindful of the challenges…
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Retail Innovation – online, offline, and mobile integrated
Today I came across a nice experience that Home Depot has built up for connecting their online and offline experiences. In searching for a house hold tool – telescoping tool, I discovered the nice experience. I often go to my default store – Amazon. Unfortunately I did not find a suitable one. So I popped…
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Low low power connectivity
Yesterday during my jog with my friend we were chatting about if there are low powered connectivity solutions for devices. We knew about Bluetooth Low Energy and continuously shrinking WiFi chips. We also knew that WiFi has been focused on enabling higher bandwidth and longer distances. Today I discovered Passive WiFi which promises to reduce the…
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Model driven APIs and service
In the past few months, I had been building a set of services using nodejs. After having dabbled in JavaScript over the past year, I was looking for a way to build service side code as well with REST APIs. voila! I discovered nodejs which fits the bill. There are many tutorials online for how…