My favourite songs

Here are some of my favourite songs with lyrics and links to the original singers and composers (wherever available)

जैसे सूरज की किरणों से तपती हुई तन को मिल जाये तरुवर की छाया by Sharma Bandhu

जैसे सूरज की गर्मी से जलते हुए तन को

मिल जाये तरुवर कि छाया

ऐसा ही सुख मेरे मन को मिला है

मैं जबसे शरण तेरी आया, मेरे राम

भटका हुआ मेरा मन था कोई

मिल ना रहा था सहारा

लहरों से लड़ती हुई नाव को

जैसे मिल ना रहा हो किनारा, मिल ना रहा हो किनारा

उस लड़खड़ाती हुई नाव को जो

किसी ने किनारा दिखाया

ऐसा ही सुख ...

शीतल बने आग चंदन के जैसी

राघव कृपा हो जो तेरी

उजियाली पूनम की हो जाएं रातें

जो थीं अमावस अंधेरी, जो थीं अमावस अंधेरी

युग-युग से प्यासी मरुभूमि ने

जैसे सावन का संदेस पाया

ऐसा ही सुख ...

जिस राह की मंज़िल तेरा मिलन हो

उस पर कदम मैं बढ़ाऊं

फूलों में खारों में, पतझड़ बहारों में

मैं न कभी डगमगाऊं, मैं न कभी डगमगाऊं

पानी के प्यासे को तक़दीर ने

जैसे जी भर के अमृत पिलाया

ऐसा ही सुख ...

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किसीकि मुस्कुराहटों   by मुकेश 

किसी की मुस्कुराहटों पे हो निसार
किसीका दर्द मिल सके तो ले उधार
किसीके वास्ते हो तेरे दिल में प्यार
जीना इसी का नाम है
किसी की ...

(माना अपनी जेब से फ़कीर हैं
फिर भी यारों दिल के हम अमीर हैं ) - (२)

मिटे जो प्यार के लिये वो ज़िन्दगी
जले बहार के लिये वो ज़िन्दगी
किसी को हो न हो हमें तो ऐतबार
जीना इसी का नाम है

(रिश्ता दिल से दिल के ऐतबार का
ज़िन्दा है हमीं से नाम प्यार का ) - (२)

के मर के भी किसी को याद आयेंगे
किसी के आँसुओं में मुस्कुरायेंगे
कहेगा फूल हर कली से बार बार
जीना इसी का नाम है

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Building a solution through the iterative process of enquiry

Building a solution is an iterative process of enquiry and detailing. Let us say we want to design an automated lift door control system.

Let us explore the questions that need answered before we embark on building the solution. For the current discussion we will limit our exploration to electronics and software areas. As would be evident later, building a solution would involve an integration of diverse engineering and domain understanding.

Typically, the enquiry process would be driven by three question areas – the “What”, The “Why” and the “How”. The answers are for illustration purpose and could have different variations

• What would be the key processes that the system has to control?
• Opening the Door
• Closing the Door
• Display and alerts

• What would the various stable states that the system would be in?
• Open
• Close
• What would be the trigger for opening the door?
• Push the open door button
• Reaching the requested floor
• What would be the trigger for closing the door?
• Pushing the close door button
• Time out after the door was opened

• What will be the transitory states of the system? Why – Some actions need to be taken during this state which is different than actions during open state and close state.

• How does the door opening process start?
• Sense the door open button is pressed
• Floor Reached Signal
• How does the door open? – Switch on the door motor to rotate in opening direction
• How do we end the door opening process? – Switch off the door motor
• Sense that the door is completely open
• Stop it after a pre-determined time
• Optional – stop it when the stop button is sensed.
• How does the door closing process start?
• Sense the door close button is pressed.
• Time-out after the door is fully opened
• How does the door close? – Switch on the door motor to rotate in closing direction.
• How do we end the door closing process? – switch off the door motor
• Sense that the door is completely closed.
• Stop it after a pre-determined time
• When an obstruction is detected in the door closing path – start the door opening process.
• Sense the door open button is pressed

Is there a need for different intermediate states for opening and closing? Why – some actions are not the same as can be seen above

• What are the exception handling, safety, regulatory and other conformance requirements?
• Stop closing of door if there is an obstruction
• Open button de-activated when lift is in between floors – this means none of the door operations are active if the lift is moving. So we need to sense this before enabling the open door process
• Handle – power supply shut down, door slider jam, motor failure, button, sensor failure etc.
• What are the key elements of the system to cater to the above?
• Doors
• Door gliding system
• Motors with three switching possibilities – off; open – rotating in opening direction; close – rotating in closing directions 
• Sensors to indicate fully open state, fully closed closed state, obstruction sensing; lift moving sensing
• Optional – Alarms – LEDs, Buzzers, signals, remote maintenance alarms
• Anything else?
• What are the control interfaces?
• To control motor?
• To sense door open/close complete sensors
• To sense lift at the floor and stationary
• To sense the open/close button press
• Which controller to choose? What are the options
• How do we integrate and represent the complete system architecture?

 

As can be seen through this journey of iterative enquiry, a simple process of opening and closing a door can unravel the complex system requirements. We have not captured in the above illustration the floor request and stationary state sensing.

Anatomy of a IoT Smart Solution

The advent of connected intelligent devices has opened up a plethora of possibilities.

Let us now explore what a typical IoT solution would constitute of?

• Sensing – 
• What are the relevant data to be accessed and controlled for deriving actionable intelligence?
• What are the sensors and actuators needed?
• How are the sensors and actuators interfaced?
• Processing – 
• What is the signal and data processing required for aggregating and making sense of the collected data?
• How is the data processed to drive the actuators?
• Communicating – 
• What is the communication medium used by sensors and actuators in reaching the data to the nearest aggregator?
• How are the wired and wireless communication interfaces integrated?
• How is the data securely sent and received?
• Data aggregation – 
• How is the raw or processed data collected from several devices aggregated and processed to derive intelligence for initiating alerts and proximity actions?
• Communicating – 
• How is the raw and processed data published?
• How is the intelligence derived through data analytics centres over secure IP broadband wired and wireless networks?
• Data Analysis and Distribution – 
• How is the sensors and gateways distribute both raw and processed data to whoever has subscribed for receiving these inputs?
• How are alerts and actions initaited based on the intelligence derived by big data analysis?
• Secure Data – 
• What are the security concerns?
• How is the need for secure data communication across all sensing, processing and communicating device addressed?
• An integrated smart solution -  
• What are the the primary drivers for analysing data is to build value?
• What are the possible reactive, preventive, predictive and prescriptive action based on data trends?

So in a nut shell a smart solution senses, processes, aggregates, communicates, analyses and acts. The key result expected from the system is driven by the application domain. That is define what is the smartness in a smart solution.

Traversing the journey from Problem to Solution – the typical stages are:

• Understand the problem – An elaborate enquiry process.
• Understand the available tools, technologies and platforms – What do they provide? Is there a need for new technology development?
• Choose the appropriate tools, technologies and platforms - What drives the technology choices?
• Building the integrated solutions - How to build and deploy solutions to end-user problems integrating available tools, technologies and platforms?

Typical IoT Solution

In this series we will traverse the journey from problem to solution in the following domains

• Smart Home
• Smart Healthcare
• Smart Industry/Factory
• Smart Car/Automobile
• Smart Cities

Communication Networks - How do we explore and learn through iterative enquiry?

Learning is a process of iterative enquiry. It is imperative that we have the right questions to comprehend simple to complex know-how.

This series will explore and list the questions that would help in understanding technology areas.  

In this post we will explore Communication Netwroks.

Communication Networks provide

• Connectivity between elements
• Transport for
• control signals –establish connection and routing path, monitor connection status, disconnect; 
• data for management of the network for faults, configuration, accounting, performance and security; 
• user data - information that needs to be communicated: voice, data like sensor data, text, image, audio, video 
• Signalling and Media Gateways: Conversion of signaling and user data formats based on the transporting media.

Let us explore the list of questions that would enable us to comprehensively understand a communication network.

What are the foundational questions?

• How is the network structured?

• What are the drivers of the evolution of this communication network?
• What is the network architecture? 
• What are the network resources provided for communicating control and user data?
• What are the different topologies?
• What are the various elements and their functions ?
• What are the key interfaces in the network? 

• What are the key scenarios?

• How is the network set-up? 
• What are the key design considerations?
• What are the key configurable parameters?
• How is the user set-up?
• How does the user register/attach/connect to the network?
• How is the user activated on the network?
• What are the key end-to-end scenarios? 
• What are the key processes & procedures for 
• Accessing the network resources?
• Establishing a connection? 
• Transmission & Reception of control and user data?
• Monitoring and Controlling the established connection
• Disconnecting / Detaching from the network

What are the advanced questions?

We will need to dive deeper in to the technology as design and development engineers, deployment engineers and technology users.

• What are the applicable standards and specifications?

• What are the key underlying technologies? 

• How are the resources multiplexed?
• What are the multiple access protocols?
• What are the underlying technologies for control signaling?
• What are the underlying technologies for data transmission? 
• encoding & decoding?
• modulating & de-modulating?
• compression & de-compression?

• What are the key protocols?

• What are key control and data plane procedures?
• What are the protocol stacks on the control plane in different elements and interfaces of the network?
• What are the protocol stacks on the data plane in deifferent elements and interfaces of the network?

• How are the end-to-end user scenarios achieved?

• Which network elements are involved?
• Which protocol layers are involved? 
• What is the role of each layer?
• What are the message flows between 
• network elements? 
• peer to peer?
• layer to layer?

• What are the conformance and performance requirements for

• network elements?
• network interfaces?
• protocol layers?

• What are the operations and business support protocols for the network?

• How is the network operations managed for Faults, Configuration, Performance & Security?
• How is the network usage monitored?
• How is the user usage monitored?
• What are the various accounting methods?
• How is the billing generated?

• What are the applicable standards and recommendations for the operation management? 

Have I missed any questions??

Human Resource – a “commodity” or a “thinking and contributing asset”??

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One question I have wanted to ask the forerunners in the industry is “when and how did a human being become a resource, a commodity, or a material”

I was recently asked by a big corporate whether we can de-skill (you read it right!!) a professional to a level of commodity (read – cheap material!!) that we can use and return!!!

The mass movement and mad rush towards IT career in the past few years has created many “do as you are told” managers and “I am okay to do as told (read I will not apply my most powerful ability – ability to think)” employees and colleges churning them out in masses.

The ability to explore, reflect and abstract are seldom part of the faculties nurtured. This could be because the different stake holders - corporates, education institutions and individuals have different priorities driving them.

With the dynamic and unpredictable nature of the market place, I understand the corporates’ need for different business models. Many of the leading corporates are unwilling to invest in building the abilities as they see that as a catalyst for attrition and an unpredictable cost – what with a wide variety of rapidly changing tools and platforms.

The corporates would prefer ready to deliver (read billable) professionals even at entry level. So organizations would look at partnering with entities that develop teams with specialized abilities. The general model is to pay per use and not have bench strength. So the question asked –“Do you know …. have you worked on…..”

At a college/institution level, the prime driver has become the successful placement record. This ensures a preferred status for the college/institution in the minds of aspiring students. Now, the corporates have decided not to vie with each other for campus recruitments as they would like to build teams as and when required.

The management of the colleges and institutions are looking at partnering and providing corporate readiness programs. The simple definition of corporate readiness is the participant is guaranteed to be placed after completing the program. The abilities can only be nurtured over period of time. There are no injections or pills that can be administered in the final year.

At an individual level, the promise of a guaranteed career is diminishing and hence there is a general lack of confidence. It gets compounded when the individual has not nurtured the internal abilities and hence feels lost. The priority is clearing the tests and interviews. This is done by being exposed to lots and lots of tests and mock interviews.

I fear that we will soon stunt the infiniteness of individual potential and mutate in to technology dependant dwarfs who will need an external trigger for even normal human actions. In the garb of progress we would probably regress!!

The one and only enabling and empowering faculty we possess is the ability to think. Nurture that and we develop many other abilities – ability to learn, apply, discern, choose and so on.

The tools, technologies and platforms only represent a medium to translate and direct our innovation abilities to contribute at a personal, professional and societal level.

The possibilities are only limited only by our enthusiasm and quest for learning. Successful people have moved from being a trained resource to an able and learned contributor. A contributor creates opportunities to learn and apply while a resource waits for opportunities to be used.

How do we nurture a thinking contributor in this era of "fast-food" culture?

Are Graduates Trainable??

are the graduates and engineers trainable???
An interesting exploration began 3 years ago for me, when I embarked on creating learning interventions that would enable engineers to get corporate ready. Over the years I experienced the immense potential in the engineers who took our programs.

The breadth and depth of learning that got unleashed through facilitated group discussions, reflection and consolidation reinforced my belief that the individuals have inherent abilities.

So I was really surprised to read an article recently which said that according to a NASSCOM report that 90% graduates and 75% engineers were rejected by corporates because they were not worth training. I had heard about "not ready" or "not employable" but “not worth training” was a surprise statement which I am unable to accept or digest.

Over the years we have equated communication abilities to how well a person articulates in English. I agree for a BPO or ITES activity where business is directly linked to speaking English. However technical communication could be easily accomplished through diagrams, small phrases and limited vocabulary.

I had first hand experience of this when I had been to Japan to get trained by OKI engineers. The Japanese engineers knew very little English. And we had been given interpreters/translators. Within three to four days we recognized that the communication was getting awry as the interpreters were only transliterating. We all know what confusion and havoc that can be caused in a technical space. We took a conscious decision to ask the interpreters to just observe and we started communicating directly. And to our surprise with our limited Japanese and their limited English and a white board for drawing figures we were able to do without a language interpreter. Over years I have also learnt that if we have the right questions then language is no barrier. Germans, French, Koreans and Japanese have created global products and work with global clients with no language barrier.

Another interesting observation was the power of group learning. Once the group got comfortable with each other, learning became as enjoyable as a game. Every question brought in a new dimension to the technology learning. I must confess I was surprised at what got generated in the classes. And many of the participants had been rejected by corporates and were without a job for over a year. Right now many of them are working in companies like Aricent, Bosch, Sasken and Huawei and are handling key technology projects.

I attribute this to two factors (there may have been others but these stood out). One the confidence in ones self that I can learn and contribute; two having no fear in asking questions even if it was mundane. I think the technology, tool or platform were just vehicles for learning.

I agree on one count that some of the participants had become engineers by peer pressure and the herd mindset that we from the corporates had created. Hence they probably were in a wrong area. But even these people would typically fit in implementation and testing roles.

I would understand if the corporates had said it does not make business sense to invest in training and we would prefer ready candidates. Even though the time taken for individual abilities to unleash is different for different people, our experience has been that most of them are “trainable”.