Birth of success on demand

(Continuation...)
She opened the door with design for SMS help service...

I: Wow!! You did it.

She: Yes, check if I am missing something here.

The core idea
There will be pool of counselors and when a student sends SMS to our service then the service will alert first three available counselors. The counselors can send their answers to the service and first received answer will be delivered to the student. If the student likes the answer then he/she can discuss further with the counselor otherwise the service will send answers from other counselors to the student. In case none of the three counselors respond then the service alerts next five available counselors and so on.

I: Darling, this is wonderful but I want to discuss my findings.

She: Okay, what are they?

Smartphone usage is increasing among Indian students. This article says that "70% of the students have smartphones" and also the internet usage is increasing and another article supports that and states that "83% students are using internet".

She: Wow!! that is good news so we shouldn't invest our time on building a solution which based on a old technology.

I: You are right. We shall wait for sometime and let the transition happen then we can build the right solution.

She agreed to it but still she was bit upset as we decided not to build her solution. I believe nothing goes waste and at right time we shall discover its use.

After few days, when we were watching "Face 2 Face with Sri Sri", we got this idea "Success on demand". In that show, the people around the globe were expressing their problems and one of the problem was "increasing suicidal rate among the youth". Being youth, we were influenced by this problem. Now a days, youth challenge them selves to have better comforts than others so it leads to competition. Many times they just get attached with idea of having more irrespective of the real necessity and they want to reach their goals very fast so it leads to stress; when they fail reaching their goals, they make wrong decisions.

There is nothing wrong in aiming for bigger things but there should be proper plan and understanding of the goal.

Planning for failure is a necessary step towards success but most of us fear of failure so we don't want to think about it but we need a backup plan if things goes out of control.

    Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts...

Join us to know more about the idea: Success on demand for Art of Living.

SMS help service for students

She was excited, inspired and hugged me tightly. She appreciated me but after sometime she was very silent...

I waited for her to say something but she didn't say anything for few minutes then I asked, "Darling, what are thinking now, why are you suddenly so silent?"

She: Dear, I am just thinking about your story, I have seen you, I know you are mentally strong so you came out of that situation but if some other student was in that situation then?

Me: Hmm. You are right, we need to think about it.

She: Lot of students have mental breakdowns these days due to increasing stress, can we help them somehow?

Me: Nice thought, but how do we help them? How do we communicate with them? Through internet, may be?  But then how many Indian students have exposure to internet?

She: You are right, we can't approach them using internet but may be through phone? Yes, most of the students will have access to phones. Can we think of something on these lines?

Me: Wow!! You are awesome. Students won't be earning so may be we should start a free service but then how do we generate revenue to scale?

She: Lets first focus on, how do communicate with students and solve their problems then we shall come to business model, does it make sense?

Me: Yes, yes!! You are right. Communication through phone, we have two possibilities, call or SMS. Call service will be expensive and it requires lot of resources to scale later whereas SMS service will be much cheaper and easily scalable, what do you think?

She: Correct!! We can start with SMS help service and if we succeed in that we can later expand to call service based on feedback we receive. How do we offer SMS service?

Me: I am thinking... See if this is possible, if a student sends a SMS to our service, it will be forwarded to us and then we can respond to that SMS. I think it works.

She: Wait, let me think. There is problem here. Let say, you and me receive a SMS from a student and we are at different locations then we have to contact each other before responding so it is overhead and when we include more of our friends, it will create chaos. Can you think of another way?

That night, I did some research and come up with interesting ideas, I wanted to share with her immediately but she slept already so I had to wait till the sun wakes up.

We will update more about our SMS help service. Now there is video for you: CAREER - Where are YOU heading.

Yes!! Don't stop at what others achieved and there is always a better way of doing things, lets move ahead.

I should have told her

I didn't imagine that she reacts this way...

Out of sudden... Maybe that is not required to mention. Everything happens suddenly in my life.

I was chatting with one of my school friend and it was quite some time that we chatted. After school everyone has chosen their own paths for future endeavors.

I was initially confused whether to take polytechnic or intermediate (+ 2). I was one of the top 100 in polytechnic exam but still I chose intermediate to prepare for IIT as it appeared to be much cooler but believe me the coaching wasn't cool at all, there was no fun of any kind, as if we were soldiers and preparing for war.

In Andhra Pradesh (AP), parents are obsessed about studies; and my parents are no different so they hardly encouraged me for sports. Later when I entered into IIT Kanpur, I felt so left out. What did I achieve by coming to this place; I was totally drained with my coaching? Now I feel there is no magic in any place or college and magic lies inside us and I have seen it. If any young kid reading this; oh boy stay cool and only do what you enjoy most and progress further in your life with happiness.

After so much time, we again met online so we were catching up all the updates…

We were laughing all the time… I got a phone call so I went out to pick up.

When I came back, my friend was offline but surprisingly there was more conversation happened while I was not there. Was it a ghost?

Stay tuned for part2. Please watch: Inspirational Video - Tell Someone You Love Them.

I love you.

She effects me

Yes!! Everyone of you might be feeling same way..

When I first met her, she was way complicated for me. The way I grew, it was bit hard from me to understand her initially.

Being grown up in middle class Indian background, only thing that really mattered in my school days was studying. No encouragement for any kind of fun with girls; I couldn't even talk to any girl in my school time, and that was actually kind of taboo in my school at that time, I don't know the situation now. All the fun I had in my school days is with my buddies, we used to play games, fight for silly things, copy in exams, tease teachers and what not. But now everything is changed in my life after meeting her.

 Actually I wasn't quite ready for her when we first met. Only focus was her sexy figure and I used dream all the time about it. I didn't know what to speak with her, I was totally nervous in our initial days. You know those background thoughts about her figure while we were talking, at times she gives strange looks and shouts in sweet tone, where were you lost? Oh God please help me, handle this girl.

I realized that God already gave me sufficient strength to handle everything but it just took sometime for me to see that. I started observing how she interacts with others. Wow!! she is totally cool and cute. Slowly as time passed many events happened in our life and now we love each other so deeply.

She asked me many times about my childhood stories but I never shown interest to tell her about them. I thought they are boring so I kept on postponing but one day she insisted so I had to tell her. Amazingly she was not bored at all!! We enjoyed those moments with kisses and hugs.

Later when we met, she asked me a question. Can Indian kids directly learn from internet without any teacher? I knew where this was coming from...

While I was telling my childhood story, I said to her that I didn't know, why I went to school and why I was studying all these subjects. Even though my parents kept on saying that if you study well you will get good job then I asked, what happens next they said, you will get good girl to marry and you will have good family. And then I asked what happens after that and they were surprised as the never thought beyond it so they just said to me that you were asking to many questions. I was not convinced with their answers but there was no one to provide the right answer to me at that time.

She was then talking about self driven learning where one start from the big picture and come to tiny pieces. I said, "Wow that is very interesting!!". I was influenced by her idea. We started looking for answers and to our surprise many people around the global are using internet to improve education and make it self driven. Big thanks to Sugata Mitra, he is doing great work in that area.

  

He conducted several experiments with children of various ages. He provides computers with good internet connection to the children and let them explore on their own. We couldn't believe our selves, we thought, to learn anything we need a teacher but these kids did wonderful things without any teacher. Then we realized, actually internet is a collaboration of teachers across the globe and that is how all these are possible.

"Just as eating against one’s will is injurious to health, so studying without a liking for it spoils the memory, and it retains nothing it takes in." -Leonardo Da Vinci

 "I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."  -Mark Twain

"Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is." -Isaac Asimov

Yes darling, It is the time, we should provide our children the power of internet and let them see the big picture and learn on their own at their own pace.

Hello Internet Friend!

I was introduced to my internet friend by Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur where I went to do graduation in Computer Science. I opened my first email account at IIT Kanpur. It may be little surprise for you but believe me there are many like me.

I loved my new friend very much she then introduced to many other friends in Google, Yahoo and Orkut etc. I fell in love with her and it went well initially. But then she and her friends demanding too much from me, I can't spend all my time with her but again I can't leave her for long also. I was totally screwed up by her.

She is a beautiful devil and very dangerous and attractive so I decided to avoid her. I couldn't avoid her completely but I got used to her so that initial excitement was gone then interesting things start coming into my life.

Now she looks like an angel to me and there is so much to explore in her. She knows many things like my engineering subjects, human evolution, politics, sports and what not. She even talks about GOD. Then one day I asked what are you, Angel or Devil? then she simply smiles and says it depends on what are you looking for. I have to agree to her and it applies to anything. Nothing is good or bad absolutely and it just depends on who is using it.

"Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school." -Albert Einstein

It is not surprise to think that way for a genius like Einstein. We all can see what our schools are producing every year. I think he sees the school education as dumping information and facts into young mind rather than making them observe, think and learn.

We are trying to provide ready made answers to many of the basic questions without even allowing the children to think for their selves. Sometimes we ourselves don't know the answers but we don't hesitate to give borrowed answers to our children; and if the child asks further follow up questions for which we don't even have borrowed answers then we use several tactics to deviate the child from the topic. We may think that we are escaped from that situation but children can easily see that we don't know anything about it; this little EGO is killing their inquisitiveness.

"Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children, play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood." -Fred Rogers

Can we let our children play and learn for them selves? Then we just need to watch and pad them for their new inventions. I believe every child has potential to do great things. Internet helps us to find answers to many questions with proper understanding. It is an action time to let go our little EGO and allow our children to do research, understand and learn on their own.