August 26, 2013
August 24, 2013
Why Steve Ballmer Failed - Posted by Nicholas Thompson
Steve Ballmer, the
C.E.O. of Microsoft, finally figured out a way to make some money for himself:
he quit. This morning, Ballmer announced that he will retire within the next
twelve months. The company’s stock surged; Ballmer is now worth about a billion
dollars more than he was on Thursday.
Ballmer is roughly
the tech industry’s equivalent of Mikhail Gorbachev, without the coup and the
tanks and Red Square. When he took control, in 2000, Microsoft was one of the
most powerful and feared companies in the world. It had a market capitalization
of around five hundred billion dollars, the highest of any company on earth.
Developers referred to it as an “evil empire.” As he leaves, it’s a sprawling
shadow. It still has cash—but that matters little.
What has gone
wrong? For starters, Ballmer proved to be the anti-Steve Jobs. He missed every
major trend in technology. His innovations alienated people. When he tried
something new, like Windows Vista, the public lined up around the block to
trade it in. Microsoft missed social networking. It completely misjudged the
iPhone and the iPad. It embraced complexity in product design just as everyone
was turning toward simplicity. It entered growing markets too late. When was
the last time you used Bing? In 2000, Microsoft made most of its money selling
Microsoft Office and Microsoft Windows. Today, it still makes its money that
way. Ballmer’s reign has done more to defang Microsoft than the Justice
Department could ever have hoped to do.
The company
suffered from the classic innovator’s dilemma. It built extraordinary software
that you run on your desktop. And as we moved away from our desktops and into
the cloud and onto mobile devices, Microsoft trundled slowly and tentatively.
It hesitated to embrace the cloud, and it hesitated to build anything that
didn’t work with Windows. In 2005, it brought in a legendary coder, Ray Ozzie, to solve this problem. In 2010, he left. The
company has built a technically brilliant gaming system, and the recently
launched Xbox
One is fully cloud-based—and almost totally separate from the parts of the
company that bring in cash.
Ballmer, manic and
sweat-stained once too
often, failed to be a great manager, or even a tolerable one. As Kurt
Eichenwald wrote, devastatingly, in Vanity Fair, the company long
utilized a system called “stack rating,” whereby every member of the company
was judged relative to his peers. If you worked on a team of ten, you knew that
two of your colleagues would get great ratings, seven would pass, and one would
fail. “Every current and former Microsoft employee I interviewed—every one—cited
stack ranking as the most destructive process inside of Microsoft,” Eichenwald wrote.
What comes next
for Ballmer? He’s just fifty-seven, a couple years younger than Gorbachev was
when he left. But I think he’ll be quiet: doing good deeds, giving away his
fortune, and popping up his head from time to time. The more important question
is what comes next for Microsoft—an American company, founded by a skinny nerd,
that provides software used around the world. Reversing the company’s decline,
in an industry that transforms itself by the day, won’t be easy; Microsoft
needs someone who can attract brilliant developers as well as she anticipates
trends. They need someone very different from Ballmer. In his memo to Microsoft
employees, he wrote, “I cherish my Microsoft ownership, and look forward to
continuing as one of Microsoft’s largest owners.” Given the size of his
financial stake in the company, there’s almost no one who should want a better
C.E.O. for Microsoft than Ballmer himself.
Photograph:
Lee Jae-Won/Reuters
This article is originally published in The New Yorker on August 23, 2013.
August 19, 2013
August 12, 2013
August 5, 2013
July 29, 2013
July 22, 2013
July 15, 2013
July 8, 2013
June 24, 2013
June 17, 2013
May 27, 2013
May 20, 2013
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May 1, 2013
Top international book fairs of 2013 (વિશ્વના પ્રખ્યાત પુસ્તક મેળાઓની માહિતી અને વેબસાઈટ)
2013's major international book fairs will
see publishers orienting themselves to a world of readers that use print as
well as digital, and one in which Chinese, Indian and South American markets
are of growing importance.
New Delhi World Book Fair
February
15-23, 2013
Pragati
Maidan, Exhibition Grounds, New Delhi, India
Formerly
held every two years, the New Delhi World Book Fair marks its annulization in
2013, this year adopting “indigenous voices” as its theme, placing prominence
upon folk and tribal literature, and welcoming France as guest of honor. In
2012, 1,300 Indian exhibitors and 30 foreign exhibitors were represented at the
event. For visit: www.newdelhiworldbookfair.gov.in
Salon du Livre
March 22-25
Porte de Versailles, Paris, France
The Paris Book Fair boasted 1,200 exhibitors with 40
countries represented at its 2012 edition, having refocused on a shortened
exhibition period and now working to accommodate small and first-time exhibitors
alongside established players. Guests of honor for 2013 are to be Romania and
Barcelona. http://www.salondulivreparis.com
London Book Fair
April 15-17, 2013
Earls Court Exhibition Centre, London, UK
The London Book Fair is the leading spring book event in
Europe, with the Frankfurt Fair dominating the second half of the year. While
the event spotlights the UK publishing industry -- the second-largest in the
world for English-language books -- it also attracts up to 25,000 visitors from
130 countries around the world. Turkey will be the Market Focus at the 2013
fair. http://www.londonbookfair.co.uk
Abu Dhabi International Book Fair
April 24-29, 2013
National Exhibition Centre, Abu Dhabi, UAE
The Abu Dhabi International Book Fair, a leading book
fair for the Middle Eastern market organized in part by the Frankfurt Book
Fair, boasts half a million titles on dislay and hosts the International Prize
for Arabic Fiction and Sheikh Zayed Book Awards. The 2013 focus will be on
digital publishing, apps, and technology. http://www.adbookfair.com
BookExpo America
May 30 - June 1, 2013
Javitz Convention Center, New York, NY
BookExpo America is the premier book fair in North
America and the largest English-language book fair in the world. More than
2,000 exhibitors and 500 authors attended the 2012 event, as well as an
estimated 30,000 visitors. Live streaming of select events will return for 2013.
The fair began in 1902 with Mark Twain as the featured author; the 2012 program
featured Stephen Colbert, Barbara Kingsolver, Zadie Smith, Michael Chabon and
Lee Child. - http://www.bookexpoamerica.com
Tokyo International Book Fair
July 4-7, 2013
Tokyo Big Sight, Tokyo, Japan
TIBF is the leading book event focusing on the colossal
Japanese publishing industry, which is estimated to be the second largest
woldwide. Focuses include general fiction, business titles, and manga, as well
as Japan's growing e-book market. In 2012, e-books and e-readers became a
focus, and the fair welcomed 66,115 visitors from 42 countries.
http://www.bookfair.jp
http://www.bookfair.jp
Hong Kong Book Fair
July 17-23, 2013
HK Convention and Exhibition Centre, Hong Kong, China
Asia's biggest book fair in terms of visitor numbers, the
Hong Kong Book Fair is a cultural phenomenom, attracting huge numbers of
visitors with its author autographs, book bargains, and cultural events. The
2012 fair attracted 900,000 visitors despite disruption caused by a typhoon
warning; 2013's major exhibit categories include e-books, e-readers and
e-learning, as well as children's and teens' books, religious books and
stationery alongside the usual fare. - http://www.hkbookfair.com
Beijing International Book Fair
August 28 - September 1, 2013
New China International Exhibition Center, Beijing, China
The BIBF presents itself as the largest publishing
industry event for the Asian market, and one which continues to grow in
importance as publishers set their sights on the huge Chinese market with its
demand for translated and English-language titles. Over 200,000 industry
members and visitors attend the event, which is historically open to the public
on the fourth day. The 2013 edition will be the BIBF's second year in a new
convention center, so organizers are predicting an even smoother event. - http://www.bibf.net
Frankfurt Book Fair
October 9-13, 2013
Messegelände, Frankfurt, Germany
The Frankfurt Book Fair is the world's biggest gathering
of publishers and authors. The 2012 fair hosted over 7,300 exhibitors from
around 100 countries, attracting 281,753 visitors. Celebrities from the fields
of books, video gaming, TV and film are frequently in attendance. Spotlights in
2013 will fall upon children's books, book rights, gastronomy, travel,
specialist information, and the Frankfurt Sparks digital initiative platform.
Brazil will be guest of honor. - http://www.buchmesse.de
Guadalajara International Book Fair
November 14-20, 2013
Exhibition Center, Guadalajara, Mexico
The "FIL" (Feria Internacional del Libro de
Guadalajara), usually held in November, is the principal event for
Spanish-language publishing worldwide, attracting 660,000 visitors in 2011 and
nearly 2,000 publishing houses from 43 countries in the Spanish-speaking world
and beyond. Israel is guest of honor in 2013. - http://www.fil.com.mx
April 19, 2013
Essay-Grading Software Offers Professors a Break
EdX, a nonprofit enterprise founded by
Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will release automated
software that uses artificial intelligence to grade student essays and short
written answers.
Imagine taking a college exam, and, instead
of handing in a blue book and getting a grade from a professor a few weeks
later, clicking the “send” button when you are done and receiving a grade back
instantly, your essay scored by a software program. And then, instead of being done with that
exam, imagine that the system would immediately let you rewrite the test to try
to improve your grade.
EdX, the nonprofit
enterprise founded by Harvard and the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology to offer courses on
the Internet, has just introduced such a system and will make its automated
software available free on the Web to any institution that wants to use it. The
software uses artificial intelligence to grade student essays and short written
answers, freeing professors for other tasks.
The new service will bring the educational
consortium into a growing conflict over the role of automation in education.
Although automated grading systems for multiple-choice and true-false tests are
now widespread, the use of artificial intelligence technology to grade essay
answers has not yet received widespread endorsement by educators and has many
critics.
Anant Agarwal, an electrical engineer who is
president of EdX, predicted that the instant-grading software would be a useful
pedagogical tool, enabling students to take tests and write essays over and
over and improve the quality of their answers. He said the technology would
offer distinct advantages over the traditional classroom system, where students
often wait days or weeks for grades.
“There is a huge value in learning with
instant feedback,” Dr. Agarwal said. “Students are telling us they learn much
better with instant feedback.”
But skeptics say the automated system is no
match for live teachers. One longtime critic, Les Perelman, has drawn national
attention several times for putting together nonsense essays that have fooled
software grading programs into giving high marks. He has also been highly critical of studies that purport to show that the software
compares well to human graders.
“My first and greatest objection to the
research is that they did not have any valid statistical test comparing the
software directly to human graders,” said Mr. Perelman, a retired director of
writing and a current researcher at M.I.T.
He is among a group of educators who last
month began circulating a petition opposing automated assessment software. The
group, which calls itself Professionals Against Machine Scoring of
Student Essays in High-Stakes Assessment, has collected nearly 2,000 signatures,
including some from luminaries like Noam Chomsky.
“Let’s face the realities of automatic essay
scoring,” the group’s statement reads in part. “Computers cannot ‘read.’ They
cannot measure the essentials of effective written communication: accuracy,
reasoning, adequacy of evidence, good sense, ethical stance, convincing
argument, meaningful organization, clarity, and veracity, among others.”
But EdX expects its software to be adopted
widely by schools and universities. EdX offers free online classes from
Harvard, M.I.T. and the University of California, Berkeley; this fall, it will
add classes from Wellesley, Georgetown and the University of Texas. In all, 12
universities participate in EdX, which offers certificates for course
completion and has said that it plans to continue to expand next year,
including adding international schools.
The EdX assessment tool requires human
teachers, or graders, to first grade 100 essays or essay questions. The system
then uses a variety of machine-learning techniques to train itself to be able
to grade any number of essays or answers automatically and almost
instantaneously.
The software will assign a grade depending on
the scoring system created by the teacher, whether it is a letter grade or
numerical rank. It will also provide general feedback, like telling a student
whether an answer was on topic or not.
Dr. Agarwal said he believed that the
software was nearing the capability of human grading.
“This is machine learning and there is a long
way to go, but it’s good enough and the upside is huge,” he said. “We found
that the quality of the grading is similar to the variation you find from
instructor to instructor.”
EdX is not the first to use automated
assessment technology, which dates to early mainframe computers in the 1960s.
There is now a range of companies offering commercial programs to grade written
test answers, and four states — Louisiana, North Dakota, Utah and West Virginia
— are using some form of the technology in secondary schools. A fifth, Indiana,
has experimented with it. In some cases the software is used as a “second
reader,” to check the reliability of the human graders.
But the growing influence of the EdX
consortium to set standards is likely to give the technology a boost. On
Tuesday, Stanford announced that it would work with EdX to develop a joint
educational system that will incorporate the automated assessment technology.
Two start-ups, Coursera and Udacity,
recently founded by Stanford faculty members to create “massive open online
courses,” or MOOCs, are also committed to automated assessment systems because
of the value of instant feedback.
“It allows students to get immediate feedback
on their work, so that learning turns into a game, with students naturally
gravitating toward resubmitting the work until they get it right,” said Daphne
Koller, a computer scientist and a founder of Coursera.
Last year the Hewlett Foundation, a
grant-making organization set up by one of the Hewlett-Packard founders and his
wife, sponsored two $100,000 prizes aimed at improving software that grades
essays and short answers. More than 150 teams entered each category. A winner of
one of the Hewlett contests, Vik Paruchuri, was hired by EdX to help design its
assessment software.
“One of our focuses is to help kids learn how
to think critically,” said Victor Vuchic, a program officer at the Hewlett
Foundation. “It’s probably impossible to do that with multiple-choice tests.
The challenge is that this requires human graders, and so they cost a lot more
and they take a lot more time.”
Mark D. Shermis, a professor at the
University of Akron in Ohio, supervised the Hewlett Foundation’s contest on
automated essay scoring and wrote a paper about the experiment. In his view, the
technology — though imperfect — has a place in educational settings.
With increasingly large classes, it is
impossible for most teachers to give students meaningful feedback on writing
assignments, he said. Plus, he noted, critics of the technology have tended to
come from the nation’s best universities, where the level of pedagogy is much
better than at most schools.
“Often they come from very prestigious
institutions where, in fact, they do a much better job of providing feedback
than a machine ever could,” Dr. Shermis said. “There seems to be a lack of
appreciation of what is actually going on in the real world.”
Source: New York Times
Source: New York Times
April 6, 2013
સેટેલાઈટ માર્કેટિંગ સ્ટ્રેટેજી
સૌ પ્રથમ તો થોડા સમય માટે કોઈ બીજા ગ્રહ ઉપર રહેવા જતું રહેવું. ત્યાંથી જે ગામડામાં જન્મ થયો હોય ત્યાં બે-ચાર ઇંટો મુકાવીને સ્કુલ અથવા હોસ્પિટલનું અવકાશમાંથી જ લાઈવ ઉદઘાટન કરવું જેથી તમે ત્યાં છો તેવું સાબિત થાય.
મોટા નેતાઓ સાથે સેટેલાઈટ ફોન મારફતે હંમેશા સંપર્કમાં રહેવું અને પોતાના બ્રાન્ડીંગ વિશે પૂછપરછ કરતી રહેવી. પોતાના જીવનનો સંઘર્ષ ફિલ્મની જેમ દર્શાવવો કે જેમાં ઘરની આર્થિક પરિસ્થિતિ હંમેશા નબળી જ હોય છે. વાંચવા માટે પુસ્તકો હોતા નથી. માં-બાપ ઉંમરલાયક હોય છે. એવા થોડા સાચા ખોટા અનુભવો કોઈ પ્રોફેશનલ લેખક પાસે લખાવીને મોટા પબ્લીશર પાસે પુસ્તક છપાવવું અને તેને ઉંચી કિંમતે વહેચવું. જો કોઈ સ્કુલ આ પુસ્તક પોતાની લાઈબ્રેરી માટે ભેંટ સ્વરૂપે માંગે તો તુરંત જ ભારતનાં પબ્લિક રીલેશન મેનેજરનો સંપર્ક નંબર આપી દેવો અને પુસ્તકની કિંમત જણાવી દેવી.
જો કોઈ પ્રોફેશનલ બાવા-સાધુ એમ કહે કે હવે તમારે આપણા દેશમાં આવવાનો સમય થઇ ગયો છે તો અહિયાં આવીને ત્રણ ચાર દિવસ રોકાઈ જવું. તમારા ગામની મુલાકાત લઇ લેવી. ગામમાં જઈને મંદિરમાં દીવો, અગરબતી કરવી જેથી ભારતીય સંસ્કાર ભૂલ્યા નથી તેવું ગામના લોકોને લાગે.
પ્રખ્યાત લેખકના પુસ્તકનું ઉદઘાટન કરવું અને ઓટોગ્રાફ આપવો. ઉદ્યોગપતિઓ સાથે બીઝનેસ ડીનર લેવું. અહિયાં ઉત્તમ કક્ષાની યુનીવર્સીટી પકડવી અને તેમાં કોઈ પણ જાતના ઈન્ટરવ્યું અને મહેનત વગર ડોકટરેટની પદવી આસાનીથી મળી જાય તે માટે અથાગ પ્રયત્નો કરવા કરતા રહેવા. તેના બદલામાં એ યુનીવર્સીટીના વિધાર્થીઓ સાથે વાર્તાલાપ કરવું. પછી ભલે એ વિધાર્થીઓને ભાષણ ઉપરથી જાય.
ખાસ યાદ રાખવું કે જે રાજ્યમાં ગયા હોય ત્યાંના મુખ્યમંત્રીનું આમંત્રણ હોવા છતા પણ મળ્યા સિવાય કાર્યક્રમ પતાવીને સીધું જ અવકાશમાં પહોચી જવાનું… મારા મત મુજબ આ માર્કેટિંગ સ્ટ્રેટેજી એ કોઈ પણ મોટી બીઝનેસ સ્કુલ કે સલાહકાર કંપની કરતાં વધુ પ્રમાણમાં અસરકારક થઇ શકે. અને આ માટે કોઈ જ મોટી સિંહ જેવી સંસ્થાઓ કે કોઈ વિદેશી યુનીવર્સીટીમાંથી એમ.બી.એ.કરવાની જરૂર નથી.
મારી આ પોસ્ટ ગમે તો જ લાઈક કરજો કોઈ જબરજસ્તી નથી. આ પોસ્ટ એ કોઈ વ્યક્તિ માટે અંગત અભિપ્રાય નથી જેની ખાસ નોંધ લેવા વિનંતી.
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