RIP Andy Grove

Posted on March 23, 2016 by admin

I was saddened by the death of Andy Grove, the former Intel CEO who drove the growth of Silicon Valley.

HighOutputManagement

Andy Grove’s “High Output Management” has been my go-to book on running teams and improving business processes. I have seen few books like it: it offers a clean, clear, distinctly common-sense engineering perspective on day-to-day issues that managers face. I have internalized multiple messages from this book, such as its approach to one-on-ones (their importance and structure) and its guidance on team sizes. This book stands in sharp contrast to many “Leadership BS” books: it offers practical no-nonsense advice and guidance, rather than noble-sounding but impractical tidbits.  Continue reading →

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Improvisation Theater Training for Creativity and Communication Skills

Posted on February 24, 2016 by admin

An activity that enhances both creativity and communication skills — wouldn’t that be a fun activity to try? Uri Alon, a scientist at Weizmann Institute of Science, promotes creativity of improvisation theater training as similar to creativity of truly innovative scientific discoveries [ link to Uri’s TED talk ]. In the keynote speech of the 2015 Supercomputing conference, Alan Alda, an Oscar-nominated actor and a long-time host of Scientific American Frontiers show, talks about the benefits of improvisation training for scientific communications.

Alan Alda’s talk gives me a push I need to give improvisation theater training a try. December 2015 through February 2016, each Monday evening I spend 3 hours learning how to do improv at NYC Magnet Theater .

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What Is Harder: An Ironman Or A PhD?

Posted on February 14, 2016 by admin

I recently ran across a curious question on Quora: what is harder, completing a PhD or completing a marathon (a 26.2 mile run)?

Having done both [ PhD, races ] , hands-down, the answer is the PhD – there is simply no comparison.

What about Ironman races though? What is harder, completing a PhD or completing an Ironman (2.4 mile swim + 112 mile bike run + 26.2 mile run)?

IronmanPhoto phd-survivor
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Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2016: Does It Affect My Purchasing Decisions?

Posted on January 17, 2016 by admin

Coming to the Consumer Electronics Show is like stepping into a geeky adults’ version of a candy shop, except that some of the candy you see won’t be on sale for several months (if it reaches the market at all), and some is priced at several multiples of what a reasonable person would pay for it.

A lot of what I liked at CES I will not truly consider buying at this time. For example:

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Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2016: First Timer’s Impressions

Posted on January 16, 2016 by admin

The legendary and glorious Consumer Electronics Show. A congregation of more than 170,000 people (for comparison, I grew up in a city of only 30,000), in the shiny artificial Las Vegas. A happening that takes over tech pages in all the media for the week before it and multiple weeks after. An almost 50 year old event where a camcoder, an HD TV, and an Xbox were first shown to the excited public.

I dreamed of going for the last 3 years; I served as a judge for the CES Innovation Awards this year; and I finally made the trip happen.

CESIt was all I expected, and more. I expected big — it was bigger. I expected the coolest new technologies — there were more technologies, and they were even newer and even cooler than I anticipated.

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The Onion At Its Best: ‘Seek Funding’ Step Added To Scientific Method

Posted on November 26, 2015 by admin

The Onion spots a much-needed addition: ‘Seek Funding’ Step Added To Scientific Method.

Quoting from the article: “After making an observation and forming a hypothesis as usual, the new third step of the scientific method will now require researchers to embark upon an exhaustive search for corporate or government financing,” said the group’s president, Gordon McBean, adding that the new stage of the process, which will be implemented across every scientific discipline, also entails compiling and forwarding grant proposals to hundreds of highly competitive funding sources.

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Ironman Triathlon

Posted on October 24, 2015 by admin

I did it!

The face of a person at the finish line of their first Ironman:

MariaGorlatova_Im2016

I found the Ironman different from all the races I’ve done before.  After ~20 major races and more than 50 races in total, I thought a race experience would not be a surprise for me.

But Ironman is different. It is a full-day affair, sunrise to sundown, and past that (I started at 8 AM and finished just short of 10:30 PM). And more than a handful of moments in the race made me feel downright certifiable. I’ve never before imagined saying to myself “No worries, I only have about two hours of cycling left” and “All seems to be going well, right? I’m almost done, now I only need to run a marathon.” An experience like few others.

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Projected Ending of Moore’s Law: Can Engineering Creativity Sustain The Rate Of Progress?

Posted on October 4, 2015 by admin

The projections of the ending of the Moore’s Law are nothing new — seemingly, they were being made for many decades. For example, back in 2009 an NSF director Jeannette Wing had the following graph in her ACM MobiCom talk slides (click to enlarge):

moore_sl_endingWhile the projections are not new, media reports on them have seemingly been intensifying. Within the last month, both The Economist and The New York Times chose to run articles on Moore’s Law coming to an end:

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New Management Models: Do They Make Control-Theory And Information-Theory Sense?

Posted on September 27, 2015 by admin

There has been a lot of talk lately about new management models, that is, the alternatives to centralized top-heavy decision-making that has been the staple of the corporate world for so long. Coursera has had a fun class on this, “Managing the Company of the Future“, largely based on the lecturer, Prof. Binkinshaw’s, book “Reinventing Management“. And of course the Zappos’ holacracy (which I cannot help but habitually spell as holacrazy) experiment has been getting quite a bit of news coverage as well (see Forbes May 2015, New York Times July 2015, Atlantic October 2015, and many others).

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Quirky, which Brought us Pawcet and Hundreds of Other Products, Is No More

Posted on September 25, 2015 by admin

Quirky, an invention platform startup that created the magnificent Pawcet, a drinking fountain for dogs, is, alas, no more. After raising more than $180 million from investors and bringing more than 400 products to the market over its 6 years of existence, Quirky has filed for bankruptcy.

QuirkyBankruptTwo years ago, I would have crawled through mud and walked through fire to have a chance to work for Quirky. They didn’t give the time of day because of my lack of experience with non-research electronics. Part of me would love to believe that awful hiring decisions like this one did them in.

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