1.
It was a busy week at work and some sickness at home. Holiday for Sivarathri at the end of the week helped to get some rest. During the week I had to make some quick decisions at work which may have some long term impact. I was thinking about how communication abilities of people become achilles heel for some talented people. I don’t find good ways to find fixes for it, to change people and I continue to try despite knowing it is near impossible.
2.
Watched three movies. Anweshippin Kandethum (Malayalam) - which is a crime thriller. I think it doesn’t add much to the usual stories, but it had some good acting and was a good watch. It was good to see the locale of remote Kerala villages compared to city based stories.
Merry Christmas (Tamil) - watched since I am a Vijay Sethupathi fan, but the film was disappointing to me. It is an adaptation of a French crime novel. The story, the plot twist and suspense was good, but for me it looked forced and artificial.
Ore Kadal (Malayalam) - older malayalam movie by Shyamaprasad with Mammootty and Meera Jasmine in lead roles. Complexity of people’s lives are way more than the normal films depict, so in that sense, it explores difficult questions. Well acted, but the morality question could have been explored a bit more deeply.
3.
I am trying to read more long form articles, to get away from social media, click baits and short video formats. I started keeping a list of articles I read, indexed with tags and a quick one liner on what I liked about it. Taking some notes, extracts as well. Becoming more organized with what I learn.
Power laws in culture - about how the content explosion is leading to InfiniteTV sort of phenomenon, how there is always going to be few very big hits which may be prequels, sequels or superhero ones that are safe bets which will be “conformed” by social signalling followed by a very, very long tail of content which will struggle to get recognized.
Generative AI: a creative new world - one year older, but interesting to see the prediction that video content will be like “personalized dreams” by 2030 and “text to product” will be mature by then. What would lakhs of engineering graduates flocking to IT do if this prediction is true? What skills should the current students learn to prepare for this? Next 5 years will be very interesting. I hope people can prepare for the disruptions in work and life due to it.
Telling a story and making a point - how to tell stories with data. About “making a figure for the Generals” - how to simplify the story to say whether we are making progress or not towards the goal, for senior leaders who will want the gist of the story rather than the gory detail. Building up by showing the basics first and then adding complexity layer by layer. Using different visualizations for distinct analysis to avoid everything being fused in the audience's mind.
Communication is the job - connected to my first point, to consciously develop the communication skill. Once we have moved to remote / hybrid which is becoming normalized, developing multiple channels of communication and repetition of messages would be key to align a distributed team on why we are doing what we are doing.
4.
Completed a 100 day streak with Spanish language learning in Duolingo. Hope to keep going this year and see how to get a bit more comfortable.
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