I have about an hour left before I have to leave my hotel to go visit Infosys. My first meeting is at 10AM so I decided to take this hour to tranquilize and loosen up a bit. My journey to India has been strenuous and pleasant at the same time. The journey started on Friday morning, Seattle time, little under 80 hours after I arrived to Seattle from Toronto. As always, packing started at the last possible second but I’ve travelled so much this year that I’ve become very proficient at it.
I got to the airport a couple of hours early so I could work on the presentation I have to deliver to Infosys this week but I ran into a manager from Microsoft and decided to chat with him instead, and hoped to work on my presentation during the flight. I was expecting the plane to have a functional power outlet since my laptop gives me a paltry two hours of battery life. Unfortunately, my seat didn’t have a working power outlet and so I used up my battery life to work on the presentation as much as I could.
I spent the remaining 8 hours eating bizarre airplane food, watching movies, and reading a book called ‘Presenting to Win’ by Jerry Weissman. The book was wonderful and thorough; I learned so much about how to design presentations so they are inherently easy on the eyes and minds of an audience. The most important thing I learned was that successful presentations are those that present the concepts, ideas, and/or proposals in such a way that the audiences don’t have to think, and insinuate graphics and text in a manner that makes it pleasant and predictable to the human eye. I took several key notes to incorporate into my presentation later.
I had 4 hours at Amsterdam’s airport before my flight to Delhi so I rushed to the business centre and plugged my laptop in and started refining my presentation. At the end of my stopover, I still wasn’t done and I cursed myself for not working on the presentation earlier. Nevertheless, there was still more time over the weekend to finish it off.
By this time I was completely frazzled and slept through my flight to Delhi. I got to Delhi airport, at 1030PM India time on Saturday. For the first time ever, I was at an immigration booth in which I wasn’t asked a single question. The officer took my passport, stamped on the page preceding my Indian visa, and returned it. I was to spend the night at a hotel near the airport. They sent a chauffeur to pick me up and 20 minutes later I was lying on a bed for the first time in over 28 hours. I called my friend Kshitij who lives in Delhi and we made plans to meet up at 6 in the morning to have breakfast and to go sight-seeing. I called home and was surprised that my parents didn’t sound worried. The next morning, I was back at my room at 1030AM after sight-seeing for a few hours. I ordered lunch to my room and worked on finishing off the presentation. I had to leave for the airport at 1230PM and I still wasn’t done with the presentation – This thing will never end!
I got to Pune at 430 and to my hotel room an hour later. Delhi was a much cleaner city, Pune was very dirty. I laid down in my bed and turned on TV which only had 10 working channels, all of which were in Hindi. I spent another 2-3 hours wrapping up my presentation and emailed it to my manager in Seattle. I slept at 9PM hoping to wake up at 6AM but I woke up at 3:00 AM instead. I did my daily email and facebook check and started rehearsing my presentation in the most stentorian tone and crisp articulation that my fatigued vocals could muster. After a couple of rehearsals I decided to make a few more changes and emailed it back to my manager.
I now have at least 50 hours of meetings over the next 3 weeks, and I am yet to finalize the agenda of all of them. I also have to deliver a minimum of 4 presentations to hundreds of people over three locations and two cities – Infosys, Wipro, and the Microsoft India Development Centre, Infosys being in Pune and the latter two being in Hyderabad. This is not a blog of gripe, but one of profound excitement. This is what I love doing - talking to and meeting with new people, and giving presentations to large audiences. I am grateful of the fulfilling opportunity provided to me by Microsoft and the conferment of a responsibility of such magnitude at such a young age. I love the adrenaline rush, the excitement, and the challenges that I’m given. I love the fulfillment that I experience when things go right, and the lessons I learn when things don’t go right.
Monday, March 30, 2009
Energy Victory (post from old blog, Oct 27 2008)
I love reading and I generally read 15-20 books a year. However, I’ve started to realize that I want everything I have learned from these books to stick longer with me. Generally, there are a handful of key takeaways in each book read. So I decided that, I will start writing about my key takeaways from some of the books that I read.
The book I last read was “Energy Victory” by Robert Zubrin, who has a proposal to reduce dependence on oil and greenhouse emissions. The reason I picked this book was because I wanted to read a book on energy. I think the hard problems of the future are in the energy sector as it has the greatest impact on our lives and the future of this planet. Are we going to have the natural resources needed to sustain our world-wide population growth? Are we going to run out of oil? Is oil going to hit $8 a gallon by next summer? Are our children and their children going to have clean air to breathe, and the natural resources to survive? Will global warming eventually lead to the next Ice Age and wipe out our species?
Zubrin argues that energy conservation by itself will not solve our energy problems. We need to innovate and engineer solutions to use alternate energy sources and increase efficiency. The amount we can save through existing conservation methodologies is easily offset by increase in population and oil price.
He recommends mandating Flex Fuelled Vehicles (FFV) in the United States to drive auto manufactures to mass produce FFV’s that would stimulate demand in growing economies such as India and China. FFV’s can utilize either gasoline or alcohol-based fuel from Methanol and Ethanol. The engineering difference between an FFV and a regular vehicle is in one sensor and a computer chip that controls the fuel-air mixture, and the employment of a corrosion-resistant fuel system. The difference in price is typically $100, but can be as low as zero and not more than $500.
Brazil is an example of a successful application of this proposal. In 2003, lawmakers mandated the usage of FFV’s, providing tax incentives to expedite the transition. By 2004, all the Brazilian divisions of the major auto manufacturers came up with FFV’s which accounted for 20% of new vehicles sales. By 2006, the number was 70%.
There are a lot of advantages to using Methanol and Ethanol. Methanol can be made by any biomass material. Ethanol is less toxic than Methanol. Both however achieve less miles per gallon than gasoline. Ethanol contains 67% of the energy of gasoline per gallon while Methanol contains 50%. However, they achieve the same miles per dollar at current prices, and significantly less at future oil prices. Since Methanol and Ethanol are water soluble and biodegradable, there is less environmental impact caused by spills. Methanol and Ethanol produced from biomass or agricultural products will emit far fewer air-polluting particles when burned. In fact, they may act as counters to global warming when made from agricultural products.
While I am not qualified to make claims on the right solutions to our energy problems, I think we all have a part to play. Fundamental change and revolutions start from the grass roots. From the people, from me and you. I think by increasing our energy awareness and taking steps to reduce our own carbon footprint, we can drive a larger market for energy efficient products and solutions to our energy problems.
Some immediate ways we can help reduce our carbon footprint:
Take public transportation over vehicle when you can
Transportation accounts for 28% of all energy usage, 65% of which comes from individually owned gasoline cars [1]. This is an area we all can make a great impact. The most common engine type used by Sound Transit buses is Cummins ISM engine [2] which has a mileage of about 7 mpg [3]. In my case, home to work and back is about 24 miles and my car gets about 20 mpg in morning traffic. If I were to drive, I use about 1.2 gallons of oil. On average, the bus has 20 passengers during rush hour. When 20 people are riding the bus, the amount of oil used per person is about 0.2 gallons of oil, a saving of about 1 gallon per person. Assuming an average of 220 working days a year, that’s 220 gallons of oil saved.
Admittedly, it’s not as simple of a calculation because there are many hidden energy costs in operating a bus. In fact, sound transit is extremely inefficient and costs $133.09 to ride every hour, 69% higher than average [4]. So the actual number of gallons I would save is MUCH lower. Nevertheless, the savings are substantial and while engineers are still figuring out ways to implement 100mpg cars, we can reduce our carbon footprint by taking public transit. Also, as more people take the bus, Sound Transit will be forced to upgrade its infrastructure and fleet and become more efficient.
My 2007 Audi A4 is the most beautiful thing I have. The best part of my mornings have been driving my car across the 520 bridge and listening to my favourite rock songs. However, I now take the bus 75% of the time. It also gives me an opportunity to read, and takes the same amount of time to reach work, and allows me to come back home during rush hour in 30 minutes instead of an hour.
Recycle EVERYTHING
I have been guilty of being lazy when it came to recycling. However, I have realized that recycling is the MOST low effort high return investment we can make to the environment. I now keep a second bin in which I dump anything that can be recycled, and at the end of the week empty it to the larger recycling bin in my building.
Every year, each individual uses 650 pounds of paper, 392 aluminum cans and 73 plastic bottles, ALL of which can be recycled. Yet our recycling rate is at 28% [5]. We recycle 22% of our glass jars and bottles, which is actually worse than in 1995 when the glass recycling rate was 27% [6]. By just adding a few minutes to our days, we can increase this to at least 95% per person and drastically impact the environment.
By recycling all our paper, each person on average will save 5.5 trees, 0.65 barrels of oil (enough to run the average car for 410 miles), 1,332 kilowatts of energy (enough power for the average home for two months), 1.04 cubic yards of landfill space, and 19.25 pounds of pollution. Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a TV for three hours. So we should never doubt the impact each one of us can make.
Buy energy efficient products
By buying energy efficient products, we will raise demand so companies are motivated to build better, more efficient products. As companies compete with each other for our business, more energy efficient products will be built. Furthermore, most of these products generally save us money and in many cases can help get tax credits. Fluorescent light bulbs have a lifetime of 10,000 hours compared to standard 750 hours and use substantially lower wattage [7]. Energy efficient appliances such as dishwashers can reduce usage, and therefore our bills, by 25%. Energy efficient construction of homes, such as energy efficient windows that can save up to 39% in energy usage [8]
I am now going to turn off this monitor, put my computer on hibernate and go sleep, thus saving even more energy.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_conservation
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_Transit
[3] http://www.cummins-sp.com/engines/automotive/ism_engine.htm
[4] http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/transportation/173114_transit13.html
[5] http://www.dosomething.org/tipsandtools/11-facts-about-recycling
[6] http://www.eia.doe.gov/kids/energyfacts/saving/recycling/solidwaste/paperandglass.html
[7] http://www.buyenergyefficient.org/fullspectrumcompactfluorescentlightbulb20watt120v.aspx
[8] http://www.efficientwindows.org/energycosts.cfm
The book I last read was “Energy Victory” by Robert Zubrin, who has a proposal to reduce dependence on oil and greenhouse emissions. The reason I picked this book was because I wanted to read a book on energy. I think the hard problems of the future are in the energy sector as it has the greatest impact on our lives and the future of this planet. Are we going to have the natural resources needed to sustain our world-wide population growth? Are we going to run out of oil? Is oil going to hit $8 a gallon by next summer? Are our children and their children going to have clean air to breathe, and the natural resources to survive? Will global warming eventually lead to the next Ice Age and wipe out our species?
Zubrin argues that energy conservation by itself will not solve our energy problems. We need to innovate and engineer solutions to use alternate energy sources and increase efficiency. The amount we can save through existing conservation methodologies is easily offset by increase in population and oil price.
He recommends mandating Flex Fuelled Vehicles (FFV) in the United States to drive auto manufactures to mass produce FFV’s that would stimulate demand in growing economies such as India and China. FFV’s can utilize either gasoline or alcohol-based fuel from Methanol and Ethanol. The engineering difference between an FFV and a regular vehicle is in one sensor and a computer chip that controls the fuel-air mixture, and the employment of a corrosion-resistant fuel system. The difference in price is typically $100, but can be as low as zero and not more than $500.
Brazil is an example of a successful application of this proposal. In 2003, lawmakers mandated the usage of FFV’s, providing tax incentives to expedite the transition. By 2004, all the Brazilian divisions of the major auto manufacturers came up with FFV’s which accounted for 20% of new vehicles sales. By 2006, the number was 70%.
There are a lot of advantages to using Methanol and Ethanol. Methanol can be made by any biomass material. Ethanol is less toxic than Methanol. Both however achieve less miles per gallon than gasoline. Ethanol contains 67% of the energy of gasoline per gallon while Methanol contains 50%. However, they achieve the same miles per dollar at current prices, and significantly less at future oil prices. Since Methanol and Ethanol are water soluble and biodegradable, there is less environmental impact caused by spills. Methanol and Ethanol produced from biomass or agricultural products will emit far fewer air-polluting particles when burned. In fact, they may act as counters to global warming when made from agricultural products.
While I am not qualified to make claims on the right solutions to our energy problems, I think we all have a part to play. Fundamental change and revolutions start from the grass roots. From the people, from me and you. I think by increasing our energy awareness and taking steps to reduce our own carbon footprint, we can drive a larger market for energy efficient products and solutions to our energy problems.
Some immediate ways we can help reduce our carbon footprint:
Take public transportation over vehicle when you can
Transportation accounts for 28% of all energy usage, 65% of which comes from individually owned gasoline cars [1]. This is an area we all can make a great impact. The most common engine type used by Sound Transit buses is Cummins ISM engine [2] which has a mileage of about 7 mpg [3]. In my case, home to work and back is about 24 miles and my car gets about 20 mpg in morning traffic. If I were to drive, I use about 1.2 gallons of oil. On average, the bus has 20 passengers during rush hour. When 20 people are riding the bus, the amount of oil used per person is about 0.2 gallons of oil, a saving of about 1 gallon per person. Assuming an average of 220 working days a year, that’s 220 gallons of oil saved.
Admittedly, it’s not as simple of a calculation because there are many hidden energy costs in operating a bus. In fact, sound transit is extremely inefficient and costs $133.09 to ride every hour, 69% higher than average [4]. So the actual number of gallons I would save is MUCH lower. Nevertheless, the savings are substantial and while engineers are still figuring out ways to implement 100mpg cars, we can reduce our carbon footprint by taking public transit. Also, as more people take the bus, Sound Transit will be forced to upgrade its infrastructure and fleet and become more efficient.
My 2007 Audi A4 is the most beautiful thing I have. The best part of my mornings have been driving my car across the 520 bridge and listening to my favourite rock songs. However, I now take the bus 75% of the time. It also gives me an opportunity to read, and takes the same amount of time to reach work, and allows me to come back home during rush hour in 30 minutes instead of an hour.
Recycle EVERYTHING
I have been guilty of being lazy when it came to recycling. However, I have realized that recycling is the MOST low effort high return investment we can make to the environment. I now keep a second bin in which I dump anything that can be recycled, and at the end of the week empty it to the larger recycling bin in my building.
Every year, each individual uses 650 pounds of paper, 392 aluminum cans and 73 plastic bottles, ALL of which can be recycled. Yet our recycling rate is at 28% [5]. We recycle 22% of our glass jars and bottles, which is actually worse than in 1995 when the glass recycling rate was 27% [6]. By just adding a few minutes to our days, we can increase this to at least 95% per person and drastically impact the environment.
By recycling all our paper, each person on average will save 5.5 trees, 0.65 barrels of oil (enough to run the average car for 410 miles), 1,332 kilowatts of energy (enough power for the average home for two months), 1.04 cubic yards of landfill space, and 19.25 pounds of pollution. Recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to run a TV for three hours. So we should never doubt the impact each one of us can make.
Buy energy efficient products
By buying energy efficient products, we will raise demand so companies are motivated to build better, more efficient products. As companies compete with each other for our business, more energy efficient products will be built. Furthermore, most of these products generally save us money and in many cases can help get tax credits. Fluorescent light bulbs have a lifetime of 10,000 hours compared to standard 750 hours and use substantially lower wattage [7]. Energy efficient appliances such as dishwashers can reduce usage, and therefore our bills, by 25%. Energy efficient construction of homes, such as energy efficient windows that can save up to 39% in energy usage [8]
I am now going to turn off this monitor, put my computer on hibernate and go sleep, thus saving even more energy.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wi
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wi
[3] http://www.cummins-sp.com/
[4] http://seattlepi.nwsource.
[5] http://www.dosomething.org
[6] http://www.eia.doe.gov/kid
[7] http://www.buyenergyeffici
[8] http://www.efficientwindow
Sunday, March 29, 2009
The Inauguration
Software. Information Technology. Business. Green Technology.
While each area is vast and seemingly disparate, I believe they are interconnected, forming a crossroad, and it is that crossroad on which I aspire to build with my career.This blog is an outlet for me to write about these four areas that I am most passionate about. My passion for these areas is almost innate, but it has spawned from my professional experiences and my unique personal curiosity.
Software
From the days I was writing code for and project managing my high school’s activity point system to the days I was writing code for and project managing a test automation system deployed in servers in the US, India, and China, Software has been core to my experiences. I started with VB, Basic, and C in high school to C++ and Java in University and C# in my internship and full time work experience at Microsoft. I have enjoyed writing code and my favourite part has been debugging and fixing bugs mainly because I’ve been quick at it and it makes me feel gratified.
While Software has eased our lives, enabled instant communication between people around the world, and increased our productivity at work, there are still many more problems it is yet to solve. Only about 1.5 billion of the 6.7 billion people in the world use the internet and so there’s still a big market to penetrate [1]. Software as a Service (SaaS), Artificial Intelligence, Unified Communication, and Business Intelligence present exciting new possibilities and countless business opportunities. On the consumer front, people are looking for better ways to manage, protect, and share, their photos, videos, and documents. On the developer community front, new evolved software languages are replacing older ones and developer tools are increasingly making it easier for software engineers to write code. Innovation in software test automation will further decrease the time it takes to release software products with higher quality.
Information Technology
My final year University project which was developing the applications and infrastructure for a wireless network of PDA’s, laptops, and desktops that could do voice, video, and data communication, a network engineering internship, my personal spare time during University spent setting up servers at home on old computers, and my work experience with web services and databases introduced me to aspects of what it entails to build and maintain IT networks. The complexity of building and maintaining data centers and IT networks, which is now a necessity for a company’s survival, is what intrigues me.
As workers are becoming more mobile and as large organizations are relying on data centers to not only manage information, but also secure it, there are still many challenges and opportunities in this area. Virtualization technologies are helping reduce costs while cloud computing is changing the way information is managed and stored. It will be interesting to see how these changes will pan out. Traditionally, many IT services companies, big and small, including consulting arms of major corporations such as IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, have provided this support to corporations who have invested in managing their own data.
Business
Most of my reading comprises of business books. Ultimately, businesses exploit opportunities, drive economic growth, provide goods and services, and determine which technologies prevail in the free market. Technology developments and advancements without business acumen become science experiments.
Business enables us to actualize engineering solutions in the market and drive technology adoption. And for non technology businesses (and in most cases, technology businesses as well), understanding the business processes and functions helps determine what tools and systems will drive efficiency and help the organization meet its business goals.
Green Technology
The potential of green technology excites me. Every time I read articles on green technology, or the problems that can potentially be solved by green technology, my mind wanders off to dream of all the engineering solutions that can help us solve our energy crisis. I think we can break down this into two problems:
1) How to reduce our energy consumption
2) How to reduce our carbon footprint
The first requires figuring out ways to be smarter and more efficient with our energy usage. The second involves changing process and materials used to reduce carbon emissions that are changing our climate. These problems are pressing and government policies and public attitude is a reflection of that.
This problem space is new and the solutions do not exist. VC funding is moving from IT to Green Tech which is a reflection of the potential of this area. I think Software and IT will play a key role in how this industry shapes out. One McKinsey study predicts that datacenters will surpass the airline industry’s emissions by 2020 [2]. Recently, there was controversy around how much carbon is used in each Google search and Google is currently investing hundreds of millions of dollars to reduce the energy cost of its datacenters [3]. It just makes sense; reducing costs is one of the fundamental drivers of business. The term “Green IT” has only recently been coined to reflect this entire new problem space. With the current state of the economy, there will be an increased focus in investing to reduce IT costs [4] and once the economy picks up again and more capital is available, I think there will be major investments in Green IT.
Furthermore, I feel technology should not be considered as a carbon emitter, it should be considered a mean to solve our energy problems. Smart software can help us measure our energy usage and determine cost saving techniques, and simulate energy usage reductions achieved by different cost saving strategies. It could do it in real time, where homes could be smart enough to know to turn off light bulbs, reduce heat used in our ovens, and automatically close our refrigerator doors if accidentally left open. In warehouses we can implement energy efficient production models that are managed real-time by software. We can fundamentally change the way our datacenters exist through not just through innovation in software and virtualization technologies, but also by building low cost hardware that generate no heat and are faster than today’s hardware.
[1] http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm
[2] http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/01/data-centers-are-becoming-big-polluters-study-finds/
[3] http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/google-responds-to-search-carbon-cost-claims-1324968.html
[4]http://www.internetnews.com/software/article.php/3789131/IDC+Economy+Will+Force+IT+to+Transform.htm
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
