Month: April 2018

Promoting your products

Apr

2018

Best way of free marketing

There are so many ways available now a days to promote your products. This can be free or paid.

Now when it comes to paid promotions, usually people are trying to avoid it at the first place and start looking for the options of free promotions. This free promotions can be telling about your products to your social networking site, professional site, group chats etc, but I don’t think it will even cover 0.1 % of the market by this way until and unless your product is rock solid, unique and highly in demand. You may say that “I have asked all my friends and relatives to keep on sharing it over their social networking place” but do you really think all others except you have ample amount of time to do that? Or they are so eager to promote your product like anything. In many cases the answer is “No”.

I believe if your product is unique and there is no other competitor then you may rely on free promotions but in case your product is not unique or excellent in quality then better to think about the paid promotions.

Lets take an example: Facebook, very well know social networking site or a product by Mark Zuckerberg. Was there a paid promotions when it was started? The answer is “No”.

Is there a paid promotions now? The answer is “Yes” even though people are using Facebook, still paid promotions now?

Even there are few other products, which haven’t done any promotions still capturing a big chunk of market such as “Xiaomi MI”. No big adds only quality products based on the customer’s need and in budget.

Alright, now which promotion is effective, paid or free? The answer is simple, if the product is unique, excellent in quality and filling market the demand then the best marking is when someone hear about your product straight from the horse’s mouth.

Qazi Tariq Uncategorized productspromopromotions

Summer Training

Apr

2018

We are planning have a 30 hours of training sessions with all those who are either planning to start their career in IT industry or preparing themselves to join big CMMI level IT company.

The idea of this training popped up as, many new comers are not exactly aware of what sort of special talent they have and how to improve it. They usually have bigger dreams and want to achieve something quickly, however while joining the work team, sometimes they feel shy expressing themselves. At the same time they used to take much time to understand the company’s process and policies. This makes them confused about what they wanted to do and what are they actually doing here. Due to this confusion, they are lacking in confidence. This confusing state of mind making their team less result oriented and gradually making them misfit for the project. Gradually as the time passes they used to learn things and start making their own choice but this will be at the cost of losing precious time.

On the other hand, those who wanted to be a part of more process oriented teams are lacking behind due to not having proper information about the process and not understanding the importance of the existing processes.

This small training is one of its kind, actually will help a bit to everyone. It will allow to get the overview of many things at one spot. Under one umbrella, one can easily understand the value of certain well known processes, such as Agile, ITIL, PMP etc, along with understanding the importance of the documentation, chronology of even. The most important is audit, which will make everyone to understand the value of processes. Having said that, it will also help the beginners to stand face to face to the actual world and be productive from the day one. This will not just stop here but allow companies to hire right team member for their projects and reduce the time and cost of the project.

Please leave comment or query in the comment section.

Thanks!!

Qazi Tariq Uncategorized processsummertraining

Generation Gap

Apr

2018

I started hearing these two words “Generation Gap” for the past 20 years, while moving from my parent’s home in Allahabad to my grandfather’s home in New Delhi. While I was with my parents, I used to work with them, play and room around with them. There was no secrete or any communication gap, which I can think off. Whatever they were saying / instructing I had to follow or come up with reasonable excuse, of course, but I have never felt like not understanding something what they were saying, however while moving to Delhi with my grandparents, I started missing few points which they want me to understand, where they want me to wait.

What is the generation gap by the way? I think in a very simple language it is the gap of mind and thought level, where two parties are not at the same wave length and keep on trying to match each other’s wave length. Sometimes, it becomes the issue of prestige, when the quick and small argument starts.

On the other hand, I think the generation gap is nothing but the technology’s evolvement, which is faster than a supersonic and multidimensional. Wondering how? Let’s perform a 15 minutes experiment;

Give a new smart phone to a 2 year old kid and the same to a 60 year old person.
Make sure that the phone is unlocked.
See who is more active and interested in inheriting it?

Hope you’ll have answer.

Now wondering about the results? Wanted to know why these differences are?

Well take the same phone in your hand for 15 minutes
Observe what you are doing with that phone.

By this exercise you may be more confused because now you have three results with you and all these results will be way different than each other.

Case – I

Here is the catch, a 2 year old is seeing multiple things happening on a small screen such as;

Colors are changing
By touching any icon, something is popping up
Sometimes the phone start singing
Sometimes dancing
Sometime something wired happening.
Eager to touch the screen
Want to open anything right away
Will through the phone if there will be lag in opening any application
Will not let the phone go out of his/her hand even after 30 minutes
Will not think of anything while operating the phone

Case – II

When a 60 year old person is talking the same phone;

He will firstly want everything should be well placed
The phone’s brightness should not be very bright
Sound should not be very loud
App icons should be well placed
Phone should not be very bulky
Will take time to touch any icon
Will irritate in case icons / application’s menus will not be in right sequence
Will give the phone back before 10 minutes

Case – III

When you hold the same phone, you’ll check;

The specification of the phone
O/S version
H/W configuration
Will install some S/W
Will browse some sites and application
Will analyze the smoothness and speed of transition etc.
Check the rating and review of the phone’s brand
Will be checking the camera quality of both side camera
May handover the phone within 10 minutes

To conclude, here is what the Generation Gap all about;

Discipline
Thought process
Willingness to take challenges
Checking new things
Innovative ideas
Loving smooth transition
Quick response

And this is where our education, experience and etiquette comes in picture, which helps the transition smoother between these generations. The other important face of this gap is to make ourselves understand that this gap is not just between us and our elders, instead it is present between us and our younger generation as well.

Cheers!!

W: saatpro.com

B: Saatpro.com/blogs

Qazi Tariq Uncategorized gapgenerationgenerationgap

Luxury Offices

Apr

2018

Every day once an employee wakes up along with many other thoughts he/she thinks about going to office. In many cases employees first thought in morning is nothing but about going to office.

For me, while heading towards the office, lots of things were circling around in my head. Of course, it was not the brain but the thoughts. These thoughts were related to the open action items, meeting the deadlines, planning for testing, deliverables, client meetings, third parties meeting, team’s status, project health check etc. in other words, as soon as an employee wakes up, he/she is actually working for office, in which he/she might be spending 9 hours in the office and rest of the hours in traffic, at the breakfast table or in the shower, however at the end all these are for the office only.

Is the office also doing the same for their employees?

Good news is “Yes”. Now a days the number of such offices, which are caring about their employees, are gradually increasing. These offices are putting much effort about making their employees comfortable while they are spending their time in the office premises. There are few offices which are even entering to the next level of comfort, which makes them stand in the luxury office category. The lucky employees of these offices are finding such offices are a better place than any other place, which make them more productive and loyal to the office along with their commitment towards the quality and ownership.

In such luxury offices an employee can name things and probably will have it, even if he/she want to sleep without any disturbance, go for it, if he/she want to work while rooming on the road, he/she may get the moving bus with all facilities for it.

I think the idea behind such luxury in office, is to keep their employees motivated and find their office the best place on the earth. Apart from that office do want to increase the employee retention, which helps organization to secure their data, limit the knowledge to go to wrong hands.

For me the idea of luxury office is a good start and yes it is effective in comparison to other regular offices.

Qazi Tariq Uncategorized employeeLuxuryofficeofficesretention

Importance of Documentation

Apr

2018

In any industry documentation plays an important role in establishing transparent communication. If we talk about the IT industry, then document is the first step before even stating a project. Once the thought process draws well over the papers then only project initiation comes to its existence. Do you think everyone maintaining proper documentation?

In a regular scenario, what I have noticed, the teams due work pressure or lake of interest skips the actual / proper documentation. As a result during transition, project closer, knowledge transition or audits, they had to face the heat.

There are variety of courses and methodologies available now a days, which are only making us to learn, how to be more focused over documentation. They are trying to make us understand the importance of the proper documentation. Let’s take an example: in case we need to book a reservation in train, what do we have to do? It’s simple, get the ticket and board the train. Is there any documentation involved in it? The answer is “Yes” and that documentation may be appear in the form of SMS or in the form of mail / print out. If this documentation doesn’t maintained by the railway authority, then how will you know which seat of the train is allocated / reserved for you? Similarly if we talk about the boarding a flight, the same documentation helps us to reserve our window seat.

The above two example shows the criticality and importance of the correct document. So as a lesson learnt we should spend more time during the documentation and should be much focused while preparing it. The best suggestion would be to have all the documentation reviewed prior to submission of the actual copy. Believe this will help throughout the project and the team will never face knowledge disconnect issue during any transition or migration. The team will be more confident during audits and auditors will not take much time to clear your project with A+ rating.

Qazi Tariq Uncategorized documentationimportance

Presentation

Apr

2018

There are various opportunities knocking our doors. These opportunities are later dividing into many other forms and areas. Further, these opportunities are taking multifold presentation format, which are giving more values to the presentation in compare of other activities, be it selling, promoting, educating etc.

To understand a bit more about the presentation’s value, we may need some examples. Let’s take an example of an advertisement, it is nothing but the presentation. A good presentation may increase the sale of the product, where as a non-impacting presentation, may not pull the crowd.

Similarly, if we take an example of the awareness for any vaccination or government policies, these are just the way of presentation, which helps people to understand and learn it easily. In India, polio vaccination’s advertisement is only a form of a great presentation, which helps the whole nation to learn about it and take benefit of the government policies associated with its vaccination.

Have we ever thought, why iphone was a quick hit or why android phone are common around us? Lets talk a bit about iphone first; while seeing first time in add it appears a clean with fine tune body phone. Once we go for the demo of it, we observe, that it is light weight, smooth touch, clear camera output, and flawless functionality.

Now when we see many adds of different android phones, we think about many things, first the cost, the camera, the display, the touch screen, smooth transition etc. then we go for the demo and we try to clear many of our doubts there.

In both types of phone, what we see, first is advertisement in the form of presentation followed by actual product’s demo. The way of presentation is the entry point. It may in any form though. It helps everyone to understand things better and make their mind to either opt it or not.

Now a days most of the parents are usually feeling amaze, when their two year old kid start navigating their smart phone and opening those apps, which he/she are interested in. They are easily accessing the internet and watching cartoon or animated stories as per their interest. Have we ever thought, that what makes our kids so smarter? Well this is nothing but the presentation of the operating system of your phone. All a kid needs to remember is the icon shape and location, that’s it.

This is one of the reason, we are seeing the smart classes for the kids and how does this smart class works? Again it is nothing but the way they are presenting the whole chapter in an interactive form. In fact if we look around, we’ll observe that many of the companies are using the animated presentation for promoting themselves. The most common tool we can see is MS PPT. It is so matured back from Office 95 to Office 365, that one need not to use any other animation or presentation tool if he / she is expert in it. Billions of business has used this tool to develop their business.

Being from the IT background MS PPT was one of the best tool used in the IT industry to share the weekly, monthly project status report, project road map, project’s screen shots, client engagement review, business engagement etc.

I strongly believe and suggest, if the first impression or the starting presentation is perfect, then rest will go absolutely fine. Hence we have to very careful and invest in better presentation, because at the end of the day, the presentation is what matters, rest will come after it. So think a lot and spend more time while preparing any presentation.

Qazi Tariq Uncategorized androidclassesiphonepptpresentationsmart

Delete Facebook Account

Apr

2018

Recently we heard about the Facebook data leak, what sort of data was it and how that data was leaked? How does it effect to us. Why someone will steal our data and do we really need to bother about it? Is that so serious? Will someone steal our bank account after this data leak, or will someone hack our phone and computer? Can a plumber please fix this? What is this leak?

Situation is so confusing for most of us who addicted to Facebook and using it just for the sack of connecting with their near and dear ones. They do share their happy moments, trip information, success stories, their kids examination results, family get to gather information, vacations photos, that’s pretty much it. What else?

For the sack of argument if some is poking in our Facebook data, why do we bother about? I meant is it that serous that we should delete our Facebook account? Then how will we spend our time, then how will we actually poke in others life?

So the biggest problem for many us directly or indirectly, how will be able to see what others are doing and how will we be able to share our stories to everyone, if they will remove their Facebook account and their be nothing for us to Like, Share, make fun off and nothing will left for comment. Situation is back to square one, what do we do now?

The co-founder of Whatsapp Brian Acton is so troubled with this that he had twitted “It is time. #deletefacebook. Now while using his twitter account, he forgot that on Nov 3^rd, 2017 – US President, Donald Trump’s @realdonaldtrump Twitter account was deactivated for almost 11 minutes. On Mar 21^st, 2016, the Indian Prime Minister’s official Twitter handle was owned by a teenager for almost 15 minutes. Just imaging it can happen to the world’s most power man’s account, then how can we expect ourselves to be spared from it?

On the different tangent, Tim Cook, the Apple CEO said that such sort of possession of data with companies like Facebook shouldn’t even exist in the first place. Unfortunately he forgot the news about the IOS code leak on Feb 8^th, 2018 and when Hackers had embarrassed Apple with data leak back in 2012. Similarly in 2014 Apple admits celebrity accounts were hacked. The list in long. I’ll not go in detail. Here you can check on Wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_data_breaches

So let’s get back to our basic question what should we do now, delete the Facebook account of keep it? If you ask to me, I would suggest post this and move on;

I, Qazi Tariq, do hereby give my PERMISSION to the Police, the CBI, the NSA, the ISI, FIA. FBI, CIA, MI6, RajniKant, James Bond, Miss Moneypenny, M, Q, the Swiss Guard, the Priory of Scion, the inhabitants of Middle Earth, The White walkers, First Men, Nobel houses of Seven Kingdom , Mereen, Dothrakis, SEAL TEAM 6, Agents Mulder and Scully, the Goonies, ALL the Storm Troopers and Darth Vader, the Mad Hatter, Chuck Norris, S.H.I.E.L.D, The Avengers, The Illuminati, The Men in Black, X-Men, Ghost Busters, The Justice League, Gandalf and Dumbledore, Santa Claus, The Easter Bunny, The Great Pumpkin, The Flying Spaghetti Monster, School House Rock, Mr. Rogers, Captain Kangaroo, The Tooth Fairy, The Krampus, and all the members of the Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Black Sabbath, Voltron, The Groovy Ghoulies, the Thunder Cats, Dr. Who, Hart to Hart, Mystery inc. (Scooby Doo), James Garner, Angela Landsbury, the WWF, the EPA, and even Magnum P.I., He-Man, Jay and Silent Bob, Cheech & Chong, Neo, Blade, the NHL, MLB, the Boondock Saints, Shaktiman and to all my beloved FRIENDS to view all the amazing and interesting things I publish on Facebook.

I’m aware that my privacy ended the very day that I created an account on Facebook, I know that whatever I post can (and usually does) get shared, tagged, copied, and posted elsewhere because I’m THAT awesome. If I don’t want anyone else to have it, then I don’t post it!

Qazi Tariq Uncategorized appledatadataleakdeletedeletefacebookfacebookleaktim

Better Opportunity

Apr

2018

Better Opportunity

What does better opportunity means? When someone asked during his / her interview about the reason for the change, they simply says “better opportunity” but what if, he was asked to elaborate the better opportunity then it will be a bit difficult for many of us to explain.

Usually most of us are really getting much better opportunity then we had dreamt about, however many of us are switching, just for the sack of change or better compensation or run towards the brand name. The recent example is “John Giannandrea”. After spending 8 years with Google, now moving to Apple. John is not a simple engineer or developer but the AI chief of Google. What made him to take this decision of movement?

The “better opportunity” is not one way, instead it is a two way agreement as the employer is also seeing better future with this change along with the aspirant applicant. Before switching the applicant might have inquired about the company, but does he / she actually what will happen once he’ll join the company. I think most of the time no. During the selection process he / she might be told about the responsibilities, still he / she will not be aware of actual condition and future. This makes him / her to think about the change.

It is not compulsory that this happens in all the change cases, we may find in many of the companies which are having staff more than a decade. For me this is the real best opportunity where both see themselves each other as the best opportunity. This makes healthy relation, better understanding and develop trust towards each other.

Working in a long relationship may make us think about the comfort zone, which is up to some extent true, however on the other hand this long relationship helps a lot. So think few time before looking for better opportunity, if that opportunity will actually pay you as a better option.

Qazi Tariq Uncategorized applicantbetterbetteropportunitychangeGiannandreaJohn

Our Information – personal / professional

Apr

2018

We used to enter all the required information asked by any of the website, without understanding the consequences of it. Since these are marked with RED asterisk “*”, we have no choice but to provide it. Have we ever thought, why does these information asked?

We are habitual of receiving lots of mails on daily basis. Our mail provider, Outlook, Gmail, Ymail etc has given us the Spam / Junk mail facility, where we can move such unwanted mails. Our mailing system is already very intelligent, which moves many of such mails in the spam / junk folder by its own. It does have the feature, which permanently delete such mails over a period of time.

Since we are so used to about these mails, notification, alerts, calls, sms, whatsapp message that we sometimes decide to live with it. Some of us gives up and let it be like that. Some of us decide to fight back against these unwanted messages. As a result we have DND “Do Not Disturb” facility, still some of these unwanted messages are reaching to us.

What these messages are? Well these can be advertisement, promotions, news, information; the matter of fact, these could be anything. But if we haven’t subscribed for these, why these are coming to us? Unfortunately knowingly or unknowingly we used to subscribe for these messages, while accepting the terms and condition during the registration of some of the sites / portals etc. Now if we have done so, then there should not be so much of hue and cry.

The problem starts, when so many of such messages starts appearing from many providers.

How does others getting our data? Is the site / portal whom we have provided our information responsible for it? Is the owner of the company responsible of it? Is the government responsible of it? If the owner of company resigns, will that resolve the problem? If the CEO gets terminated will that solves the problem? The answer is NO. The process has to be matured to secure these information.

There are possibly two very simple and common method of such data leak, one – code’s security testing wasn’t done properly and two – someone internal or external has the database access. I am not blaming here the developers or hackers, instead I believe someone’s responsibilities are compromised.

Remember the future’s oil is data and that is the reason you will notice everyone is asking for data. The more data the company have, the better prediction will be done by them. To understand it more, we take the simplest example which we see during our Search. As we start typing to the search box, it starts giving us suggestions. Similarly our personal and professional information provide lots of information to others. Lets take another example; we used to receive lots of calls for loan, how? They know out credit score and they have the defaulter’s data with them. Lets take another example; we used to receive lots of mail and calls about many job portals including those whom we haven’t even registered, how? They are pulling the information from our professional database.

So far there is not any solid idea, which I am aware of to stop data leak and misuse of our data but one, which may reduce these, is to make ourselves responsible of our data because whatever is once out over internet, assume it is public. Hence we should deactivate our account from all those places, which are not needed anymore. Stop registering ourselves here and there. Think twice before installing any free software. Think again for registering ourselves for receiving any free alerts or promotions.

Again the Data is today’s Gold, the more it is with the companies the better they will be. So the companies will keep on asking for it. It is for us, how we deal with it.

Qazi Tariq Uncategorized datadataleakinformationleak

Digitization

Apr

2018

Digitization

In a survey, on an average everyone in India is spending almost 2 hours a day on internet. Many of them are involved in the IT business, many are spending time over social networking apps / sites, some are on shopping and few are listening or watching songs / events / movies. Digitization is become so common and a daily need that we are even not realizing, when all of us became so digital.

When a person joins any social media, he actually want to tell to his world, what he is up to. It is up to some extent similar to a kid, who needs everyone’s attention. If we notice this digital world is doing exactly the same thing for us. It is giving a shape to our imagination to gain others attention. This help us to gain business and success in marking. It also helps to show how exactly a company is doing and what other people think about it’s product or service. It is kind of transparent and available round the clock, while working tirelessly for you.

There are many companies which are helping others to get digital as per their requirement and imaginations. Google is one of them, which is putting all effort to help new comers to take benefits of it’s services to get their business quickly digitize. Google even providing free online training session to make things simpler for them. It is providing site templates, SEO and SEM facility, how to search domain along with managing the data.

As a human, everyone wants to be a better future and this virtual digital world is proving all these to today’s and next generation. Hence everyone should embrace this digitization and open our mind, let the transformation of imagination happen. Because at the end, this is the imagination only, which is the mother of all the innovation and today’s digitization.

Qazi Tariq Tech Update digitalIndiadigitialdigitizationIndiaInternet