It’s been quite some time I haven’t updated my reflections in this blog. When I started blogging on June 2009, its primary goal was to share experiences collected from various events that I was engaged in. As my professional network was increasing, this blog served pretty well to create my presence over the Internet to reach more audience. I cherish a moment when I visited CAN-SoftTech 2010 and one of the participants greeted me, said that he knew me from my blog and has been following it regularly. It truly maintains my presence in my absence and helps me maintaining my personal brand, Me 2.0!
The presentation of contents in the blog has remained completely intuitive. The blog entries were in a form of post-event reports. Although my aim in writing the posts was to maintain truth, I have been aware of fluctuations in my efforts to make the contents clear and concise.
Analysing the web-statistics of the blog, I found that it’s been viewed from various countries, the blog appeared in results of different search engines, different keywords used for search, and highly encouraging number of hits. As the success of writing blog enhanced my personal brand, it also became overwhelming for me to make it more exciting. And every one of us know that it’s difficult to make our writing exciting!
I explored various suggestions from experts to make communications effective, in particular, Edward de Bono’s ‘How to have beautiful mind’. In first three chapters, his suggestions for effective communication are to know: how to agree, how to disagree, and how to differentiate ideas. It’s been three years I am practicing them and still I’m not able to master these skills. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to move to the fourth chapter that deals with skills for how to be interesting 
My recent interactions with Barry Jay (Associate Professor, University of Technology, Sydney) and Grant Cullen (Leadership Development Coach, Curtin University) revealed two different but equally applicable approaches to make our writings more interesting. The first approach suggests life-cycle of writing where as the second approach suggests structural framework for reflective journal.
A writing journey has three stages. At first stage, a writer need to write only ‘true’ sentences. Truth maintenance is the key task in this stage. After sufficient confidence in truth maintenance, the writer need to focus on making the writings ‘clear’ to the readers. Once the writer masters these two skills, s/he now is ready to make the writing ‘exciting’. In a writing journey, these stages help a writer to focus at one level of abstraction and move further.
A good structure of writing enables readers to navigate the concepts easily as well as also serves as reflective learning tool for the writer. TRIPP is a structural framework that enables writers to reflect on their learning and manage expressions of intuitions. The name TRIPP is an acronym for five structural components of reflective journal: The event, Recognise, Interpret, Principle, and Plan. A reflective writing starts with true description of the event/s that occurred. The writer then describes how s/he was immersed in the event and what s/he has noticed. It requires attention to the details and will be useful in deriving support for the concepts being presented for interpretation. Writer now provides his/her own reflections about the interesting details captured in the event. Writer may also present other possible interpretations of the details. Throughout witnessing the event, becoming part of it, and reflecting on it, writer must have learned some principles about the experience. It’s good to share those learning principles in reflective journal. Then writer presents future plan/s to enhance the experience. This structural framework enables writer to look back into the journal entries and figure out his/her own experiential learning path and accomplishments.
Writing reflective journal and making it effective is a challenging task. I have noticed people saying they ‘feel great to start this new experience’ of blogging and being end up with ‘hope I am not sounding like a crazy’ in last blog entry. I hope practicing the TRIPP framework in parallel with the writing cycle presented here enables a writer not only to express his/her own reflections but also for better learning-writing experience.
Expectations of market from IT pros with academic excellence is high. However, lack of true real-world experience sometimes overshadows the academic achievements. Learners build up their skills and knowledge for future. Various learner centric activities such as projects, field visits, presentations, internship etc. show the readiness of learners to jump into real-world problem solving paradigm. But still, learners do lack hands-on and on-the-fly problem solving skills.
Certifications help learners gain competitive advantage as well as enhances confidence while moving into the real-world. Efforts done by industries for development of certification paths, learning material, hands-on practices, and industry proven skills are highly appreciable.
Microsoft MDP Nepal is also raising awareness on certification on Microsoft technologies. It’s a good opportunity for learners to participate in talk programs conducted by Microsoft officials. The direct interaction with learners are highly effective.
We were happy to welcome two Microsoft personalities, Mr. Allen Tuladhar, Country Manager, Microsoft MDP Nepal, and Mr. Sukhdev Singh, Microsoft Learning, APAC, Singapore on September 23, 2010.
Free and Open Source Software has enabled learners to choose contents/products from a pool of resources. This year, SFD was organized in decentralized fashion. Various institutions organized SFD for promotion of FOSS, knowledge sharing, and social networking.
NOSK (Nepal Open Source Klub) from NCIT (Nepal College of Information Technology) organized SFD in its premises at Balkumari Patan, Lalitpur. Volunteers were engaged with visitors all the day sharing their knowledge on various stalls such as Linux install box, Troubleshooting center, GB Satasat, Open Art, Portable Apps etc.
Moving towards new dimension in life. We welcomed the young, enthusiastic, and energetic amateur professionals into the field of Information Management on September 1, 2010. A formal orientation towards Values and Character Development in Life, IT and Business, Information Management, Stress Management, and Keys to Academic Success was delivered to the new comers along with the experience sharing on college life and preparedness, time management and leadership, and future of technology from practitioners and professionals.
Welcome BIM 2010 batch @ St. Xavier’s College. Click here for photos.
Korean MultiMedia Society (KMMS) jointly organized the Sixth Multimedia Information Technology and Applications on August 23-25, 2010 at Godavari Village Resort, Lalitpur, Nepal. It was also an expertise exchange platform where researchers from Korea came to search for prospective Ph.D. candidates from Nepal. Various research papers were presented orally and using posters.
My paper (ISSN 1975-4736 p. 73-76) and presentation was based on cost-effective, energy efficient e-Learning platform for knowledge management activities. Use of micro-servers, existing NREN network, content development skills etc. show that we are ready for an efficient e-Learning platform implementation.
With rapid increase in customer expectation, building and maintaining customer loyalty is a big challenge for businesses. Innovation in product, service, and experience in experience based economy is a hard task. Rather, various businesses are creating innovation by attaching IT component (service/product) to their traditional product and/or service. The inclusion of IT/IT driven components enables businesses to perform innovative business with minimal cost and flexible options.
Click here for a talk program delivered to graduate level business students @ St. Xavier’s College, Kathmandu, Nepal.
The awareness on Information Security is increasing day by day. The necessity of Information Security has been understood by many executives and managers in various business sectors. The participation of CEO, COO, GM, AGM, IT Manager, and IT Officers from various organizations in Information Security for Business – II training show the interest for Information Security readiness in Nepalese market. The training was held on August 10-12, 2010 at Eastin Hotel, Makkasan, Bangkok. We were happy to welcome Prof. Kuldeep Naagi for sharing his experiences and vision for Information Security for Businesses.
Library management is a crucial task in learning environments. Proper cataloging enables efficient storage and retrieval of the books. Standards compliance need to be maintained in cataloging. HealthNet Nepal has been a pioneer in developing OpenSource solutions that are cost effective, and customized according to customer’s need. HealthNet Nepal along with University of Waikato organized a 7-day workshop on Koha, 1-day national workshop on Koha (ILS) and GSDL, and 3-day regional workshop of coordinators of GSDL national nodes in SAARC countries on July 15-25, 2010.
I was assigned to conduct feasibility study on distance learning on digital libraries. Representatives from six SAARC countries were consulted and the feasibility interaction was done. The responses from the representatives showed that there is a need of distance learning on digital libraries, and the organizations that satisfy the pre-requisites can go for distance learning.
Sharing the experience of Windows Core Workshop 2010 organized by Microsoft Research Asia in Beijing was a great experience. The MSPs and faculty members from various colleges showed keen interest on projection of latest trends in Operating Research and classroom activities in Nepalese scenario. I am ready to share my knowledge and experience of Windows Core Workshop with all interested students and faculty members.
Date: June 17, 2010
Click for photos here. (Courtesy: Allen Bailochan Tuladhar)
