This book received some nice reviews and with quotes like this:

Uncovering the hard facts behind the myths and conjectures of popular belief, nationalist rhetoric and cinematic imagination, this book provides, for the first time, a credible portrait of Mangal Pandey as he really was.

I was interested in getting hold of a copy and reading through. Needless to say, it has been a huge letdown. Stating absolutely nothing about the character Mangal Pandey, it fails to provide inputs on his role in the Great Mutiny. What it does is tickle and tease around with the idea as to whether Mangal Pandey as the forebearer of the Mutiny was a figment of British ingenuity. Given the dearth of historical material on Mangal Pandey, the aura around him is fictionalised in a large way. If you are looking for some insights on the man that was Mangal Pandey – this is not the book for you.

On a side note… Sayamindu writes about the first day of the Indic Meet. Interesting to note that Satish gave a keynote address titled: Localisation – Challenges and Satish Mohan 🙂

I have an odd habit of purchasing a book and then just rushing someplace to sit down with it and leaf through. Last week I read through Pour Your Heart into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time. I am still reading it for the second time and I must say that it has been a very humbling experience. I would recommend this for anyone who wishes to start off a new business venture that is customer facing and based on service delivery. Sure, the products might not be the same as Starbucks, but the engine of growth that runs through a customer service industry is the same everywhere – generating Customer Delight

For some time now, I have been trying to figure out what makes software services companies in the FLOSS space tick and how should they carry out business to enable them to sustain themselves. I have known too many companies starting off with very adrenaline ambitions only to peter out within 2 quarters. FLOSS is a technology driven space – and this is where the catch lies. FLOSS based business should not be driven by the lure of every moving target technology, but based on a solid foundation of core concepts. Figuring out what one can be the absolute best at takes sometime. But once that exercise is complete, building on the foundation through discplined action is just a matter of natural follow-up. Discpline must prevail at all levels of service delivery chain – from making the first proposal to getting recurring revenue out of an account. Taking a look at these chaps might be a good idea. Additionally, if you do have access to a good library, go get this book. It is worth every moment you spend on it.

Finally, anyone who can provide me with a download link from the Project Gutenberg site for The Seven Pillars of Wisdom would be profusely thanked.

Read this book. Gladwell explains the concept of “thin slices” or taking snapshot instances of data and arriving at conclusions from them. The premise is simple. Most decisions can be broken down into a series of logically connected and sequential information slices. More often than not the most important part of the decision is based on the first slice which contains the information. Very pacy read and nicely constructed though on the face of it appears to be a bit hyped.

A small review of this lovely book is here

Am currently reading Built to Last : Successful Habits of Visionary Companies. It is an interesting read primarily because of the fact that the conclusions drawn from the study can be easily applied to those companies who are trying to make their mark in the Free/Libre Open Source Software Development sphere.

The following paragraph would summarise what the book tries to get across using the various examples.

The core myth, according to the authors, is that visionary companies must start with a great product and be pushed into the future by charismatic leaders. There are examples of that pattern, they admit: Johnson & Johnson, for one. But there are also just too many counterexamples–in fact, the majority of the “visionary” companies, including giants like 3M, Sony, and TI, don’t fit the model. They were characterized by total lack of an initial business plan or key idea and by remarkably self-effacing leaders. Collins and Porras are much more impressed with something else they shared: an almost cult-like devotion to a “core ideology” or identity, and active indoctrination of employees into “ideologically commitment” to the company.