The American Way

Product Management goes ZOOOOOM!!!!

Last night, our team (CM Product Management) held our annual team event.  This year, we decided to do something a bit more active, and we went Go Karting !!! We went to this place  called Go Kart Racer, not too far south from San Francisco, in a place called Burlingame. It was crazy fun: we got suited up, helmets, collar cushion, and went on to the tracks for a 10mn practice run, going at around 30mph, then a 5mn qualifying race, and finally the big race which goes on for around 15mn (around 30 laps). I came in 2nd (not bad, for someone who still doesn't have an official driver's license !!, must be all the video games I played when I was a kid (and still play... on my trusty play station portable on long haul flights to Israel!).

After an exhausting race, we headed over to Sunnyvale, where we had a few drinks at an Irish pub called Murphy's (duh) on Murphy street ! Had a bite to eat, and got driven back by Jack, in his trusty ol' Porsche...

All in all, a swell evening ! Had loads of fun, high adrenaline, and a good time with the team.

Diwali...

Yesterday the Amdocs San Jose campus celebrated Diwali ! Diwali, also known as the "Festival of Lights", is a major Hindu festival, and symbolizes the victory of good over evil.

We have a large Indian community @Amdocs, especially in the San Jose campus (of course, we have a lot of Indians working in our Pune office, but that's normal... ! :) ), and every year they put together a wonderful event, comprising a pot luck Indian lunch, some music and cultural activities.

This year was wonderful, the weather was great, so we had lunch outside, in a friendly atmosphere, and they organized a 20 minute "Bollywood/Bhangra" dance festival, where Indians, Americans, Israelis, South East Asians all got together, dressed in traditional Indowares, and danced to great Hindi pop songs !

The party was so much fun that the Indian folks from eBay across the street where looking at us with furious envy (for once :-) ).

If you're interested in checking out the pictures, I've posted a few in the online album.

Pictures of Boston Uploaded

So I've uploaded my first batch of pictures of Boston... feel free to check out the album here.

Lucca... fabulous Italian Restaurant

Oh. My. God. Rare is the time when I sit down in a restaurant and think - I'd come back to this city, just for this place -. But this is what happened tonight between me, and Lucca, a fantastic slightly up market Italian restaurant in the little italy (called "North End") of Boston. You can read the detailed review on my yelp profile. All I'll say is that this restaurant kicks ass, and I will definitely come back to Boston because of this place, and next time, I'm bringing Max. She really would have liked it here. I've got to figure out a way for her to join me on these biz trips.

Boston, the majestic city

Boston is truly, truly beautiful. I have yet to see a city that exceeds its beauty in the US. It is surrounded by water, which cleverly partitions the city into different districts, and distinguishes it from its posh neighbour, Cambridge (which hosts 2 of the most prestigious universities in the world, Harvard, and MIT).

It's also a city that is quite different from the cities I've seen so far (San Diego, San Jose). It's public transport system (called the "T") is advanced, has good extensive coverage, and the city is actually dense, so walking from A to B is an actual possibility (if not a recommended course of action).

More distinction can be ascribed to Boston due to its key role in US History: after all, it is here that the American Revolution started (cf. Boston Tea Party), and where the Declaration of Independence was signed. The city lives and breathes its history, its Irish heritage, and is absolutely enthralling. I walked the freedom trail (see photo album), which lets you walk a 2.5 mile trail within ol' Boston through its historical monuments. I would truly recommend this city on anyone planning to visit the US, and wanting to get a feel for how NYC ought to have been... without the rudeness and scum of NYC... (flame door is open).

I only got to spend a couple of hours visiting today, as I had to head back for the conference, but I came back later on to have dinner... more on this later.

Update from Boston

So I finally got to go through a quintessential American experience, the dreadful "red eye" flight from West Coast to East Coast. After spending a wonderful couple of days chilling out & playing golf with Leslie, Steve, Eric, Sean and Manon in South Lake Tahoe (we were celebrating Steve's birthday), I got picked up by limo on Saturday afternoon to start my trek across the country.

The limo picked me up at 1pm from Tahoe, and we got to Sacramento Airport at 2.30pm (my flight was only due to depart at 5.10pm). After being bored out of my friggin' mind for nearly 3 hours, finally boarded the plane to Denver (my scheduled stop over before changing planes to head to Boston). Once in Denver, I had to wait 3.5 hours before getting on the plane to Boston. I arrived in Boston at 5.30 a.m. local time, or 2.30 a.m. Pacific time...

Beurk. I was so tired, but I was determined to see a bit of the ol' Boston before the start of the conference this afternoon. You'll here all about it in the next post.

San Diego, Day 2

The conference ended at 2pm today, so I decided to change out of my suit, and into some linen shorts, half shirt and flip/flops, and went to the world famous San Diego Zoo. What a beautiful place. I won't bother writing too much about the Zoo except that it differs from other Zoo's in that in provides animals with their native habitats, and strives to preserve not just wild life, but also plant life. There are over 100k species of plants over here.

 

I only had 3 hours, so I took the 32$ value package, which allows me to hop on the tour bus, and take the 45 minute tour of the Zoo, which is 18 acres large. This is a good way to get a quick overview of the attractions, and make note of the things you want to see more closely. For me, that was mainly the Great Panda Bears (and their new born baby), the Giraffe's, the Oliphants, and the Rhino's… After the tour, I took the express buses and walked to the different targets, snapping away with my camera.

 

Got tired after a while, and had seen what I wanted to see within 2 hours. At 6pm, stopped for a Sam Adams, and then headed over to San Diego airport.

 

San Diego airport has got to be the most boring airport I've had the opportunity to lounge in in the US. It's even worse than San Jose's (which at least has a starbux and free wifi). This airport has a dodgy Sub fast food (not Subway's but somethin' else), and NO WIFI AT ALL. As a result, I'm typing this up in MS OneNote.

 

In any case, I'm now on vacation again… and we're off to camp in San Mateo county the next few days… so no updates for a bit. Hopefully, when we hike Redwood Memorial Park this weekend, it won't be to our deaths !!!!

San Diego, Day 1

Well, I used to think that the only cities I would choose to live in the US would be San Francisco, Seattle, and Denver. I now officially add San Diego to the list. Set on the pacific, it is continuously surrounded by it, with little peninsula's, coves, bays… it's a bit less charming than Sydney, but the sand is white, the weather is great, and there's a lot of surf.

 

This place definitely feels a lot more "Cali" than Northern California… Cali in the television sense if you know what I mean… kinda like LA, but without the glitz, obnoxiousness, and "Did you see me" feel. As I was walking down Mission Beach yesterday after the conference, I saw couples on tandems, rollerbladers, iPod Runners, Horse Shoe throwers, surfers, skateboarders… they were all there… the wind was warm (the santa anna winds ???), but it felt real good.

 

Had some crab at this joint on the beach, and chilled out with a couple of beers.

 

Nice. Real Nice.

 

In terms of the conference, well it's pretty good quality (check out the confe rence location on the right !!!!). My colleague's GK (Director of Industry Vision) and TG (Chief Scientist @ DOX) did well, not surprisingly. I learned a bit, networked a ton, and got 0 leads as the booth babe (booth babe is a sexist reference to the ladies that staff the really big industry forum booths…. Like E3, for example). I guess I ain't cut out for it ;-). In any case, I held the fort, which is what I was here to do.

San Diego, here I come

So in a few hours, I'll be flying to San Diego, which is in Southern California. I'll be there for 2 days (1 night), managing an Amdocs booth at a tradeshow... called the IMS Evolution Summit. I'll be staying at the Best Western Blue Sea Lodge on the beach (picture of location on the right)... right across the street from the conference (good thing, as I still don't have my driver's license!!!).

IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) is a new network layer that aims to enable service providers (telco's) to rollout a "killer environment" that will facilitate the consumption of data and content services, and enable fixed mobile convergence. It will also reduce the cost and time to market related to launching new telecom services / applications by enabling a shared resource approach (traditionally, new services are siloed across different system stacks... making the TCO of new service launch for Telco's excrutiatingly painful).

IMS will have the following benefits: provide the ability to provide "blended" services. This is pretty abstract, so it's best if I use an example:

Imagine a family: Father, Mother, and daughter (who goes to College)

1. Daughter (using Voice over IP mobile phone and wifi connected laptop): Hi Dad! Can you help me with my homework project ?
2. Father (at the office using desk phone and workstation): Sure, show what you're working on
3. Daughter pushes (one button press) from laptop to Dad
4. Father: Hmmm.... this is Mom's specialty. She's out, but I see that she's available (she is "online" on her mobile, and appears "online" to her family, much like Skype, or Push to Talk).
5. Father pushes homework to Mother to her mobile phone
6. Mom (using smartphone): I'm heading into a meeting.... Send me a picture of your work and I'll review it on my way... (few seconds later) This looks right. Your graph of Einstein's theory shows how mass variations affect curved space time. Good luck !
7. Daughter: Thanks Mom, Dad ! See you at Spring Break...

Basically IMS will allow us to talk, do Videoconferencing, share documents, all at the same time... and not just mobile to mobile, but VoWIMAX (Voice over Next Gen Wifi), Fixed line telephony, or even Skype. The end device or phone compatibility will not matter any more. If I want to play Doom3 from my cell phone with someone who's playing Doom3 on a PC over high speed LAN this could be a possibility....

 

Any way... enough with the work stuff.... now off to San Diego. The flight from San Diego is about 1.2 hours... but it is at the other end of the state !!! I'll post more from there (providing I have WIFI access... my card has been acting up lately).

Tel Aviv Session 2

Our second round of product planning took place at Amdocs HQ in Tel Aviv between May 11-15. over 150 projects were presented by product managers from all parts of the company: Billing, CRM, Service Management, Content, Foundations... some were great, some were not so great (as these things probably always go).

It was pretty intense, but I had a lot of fun, and continue to meet some great people in this company. I've often wondered why I've stayed with DOX for so long, but I guess being able to interact with people from a wide span of cultures, travel to countries that I would never have thought I'd go to (Israel was not on the top of my list), is actually fun.

Some would say that I could have done this while remaining a contractor, that I'd have more independence, etc. Maybe so, maybe so.... but having seen both sides of the coin, I really think that if you put your mind to it, you can influence which roads open up to you, which doors open, and which ones shut, whether you are a permanent employee of a relatively large company or whether you are a freelancer.

We also got the chance to have what the Israelis call a Kumzit. I am told that this is Yiddish for "Come, sit... and let's all sing together". Traditionally, Kumzit's are an ancient jewish tradition, where folks gather around a campfire, eat bread and hummus (and probably other stuff, like tahini, olives, and other mediterrenean fare), drink, sing songs in an open meadow. This is pretty much what we did, minus the singing. Somehow, we never actually got to the state where we would start to sing and stuff. Maybe we weren't drinking enough ??

In any case, it was actually one of the better corporate events I've been to, and was a good way to bond with our Israeli counterparts.

That's all for now,

Shayan