I joined TEDx Seattle 2020. The event itself showed the other (bright) side of Covid, first ever virtual and free. I don’t know its past attendance # yet 1200 watching live would be a great # to spread worthy ideas, thank you TEDx Seattle hosting team. The theme was chosen well – to bridge and …
Category Archives: Creativity
Staycation => Voluncation
Due to Covid, this holiday season will be staycation, no travel for me. I would enjoy reading, writing, and attending virtual activities yet I want to do something more and different. I read about Catch a Fire, a platform for skill-based volunteering, a while ago and decided to sign-up. I applied for two projects with …
“Spicy” Win
This week I’m working with teams to define and align 2021 priorities and estimate development efforts. For some, they are cautious about the expectation (how to estimate TBD?); for others, they’re eager (& perhaps inpatient) to see the projection. It’s also time to request and determine next year’s budget and resource allocation. It’s no surprise …
Give a Gift that Lasts a Life Time
I met Heather Beem, founder of Practical Education Network (PEN) at an MIT social innovation event several years ago. I like her/ PEN’s mission to improve learning outcomes by building teacher capacity with locally available materials. We became friends. I reached out to her recently asking if anything I can assist with my voluncation (volunteer …
Creative Volunteerism
After a heated election, Feel inspired, America brought me a big smile. One example… In 2016 Scott Duncombe, a software developer in Portland, Ore., saw on the news that Cleveland residents had to wait hours in long lines to vote. His heart went out to them. In Oregon, there are never any lines because everybody …
Sal Mubarak
My roommate usually goes to visit his girlfriend during the weekend. The past weekend is Diwali (11/14), one of the biggest Indian holiday to celebrate light over evil. I was eager to hear how it went. When I got up on Monday and came to the living room, I saw a card with my name …
Patience
I posted the job of book cover design on Upwork and 9+ people responded. One designer offered to do it for $5 in exchange to write him a recommendation afterwards. He calmed he has done many book covers yet new to Upwork so he wants to “fast-track” establishing himself. The cost is tempting and I’m …
Enchanted Halloween
A special Halloween 2020: I achieved the goal to complete “UncoverSpecial” book editing by the end of October – getting ready to publish in November and I enjoyed two first experiences… First Trick ‘o Treat: I came to US as an adult so I never had a candy basket experience. I did my usual after-dinner …
Worth it?
We, product and UX team have spent the past few months designing the customer research and interviewing users to gather feedback of the current customer portal and the new design. It took a lot longer than expected to set up the calls though most of sales/ Ops teams welcomed the idea to engage customers. Looking …
Fun & Why of Halloween
Have you wondered why people dress up in custom in Halloween? Why children go trick ‘o treat? Also, why people carve pumpkins vs. zucchini or other vegetables…and why they are “spooky” faces? I decided to research on them for my Toastmaster speech, “Fun and Why of Halloween”, let me share with you what I’ve found… …