Does working from home work ?
- by Jyotsna Pattabiraman
Happened on “The Way I work” series put together by the folks at Inc. Magazine, featuring people like Jason Fried from 37 Signals, Essie Weingarten of Essie Cosmetics , Matt Mullenweg of WordPress and others. I seem to remember that Fortune Magazine had done a similar series on leadership behemoths like Colin Powell and John McCain, but Inc.’s set is a lot more inspirational and actionable to me because they feature entrepreneurs . BTW, Inc. has some really good content for startups – wonder how I never came across it before.
A lot of folks in the series talked about how they don’t really require their employees to come in to work and are perfectly happy with them working from home. Well, this is something I subscribed to when I first got to Bangalore from the Valley, but over the past year, have changed my stance significantly. You would think that, on the surface, working from home would be a good solution in a city where traffic is the single biggest deterrent to productivity, but as I found out, the cultural and infrastructural set up doesn’t really support that. Here’s why .
Spotty power and connectivity : The first shocker for most people like me is that power and internet connectivity are unreliable in India. You or your employee might be terrifically productive at home – but you do need power and internet connectivity , right ? In India, the power and network connectivity have frequent outages, sometimes several times a week. If your employee does not have a generator at his place, then he’s pretty much out cold for the count. It may take a few minutes or several hours for him to become productive again – how is that going to impact your project ? At the very best, this kind of experience is very frustrating, at the middling, it is lost time that you can never regain, at the worst it becomes an excuse for every late project.
I just called to say “Your code sucks”: Having tough conversations is that much more complicated when you’re not face to face. The difficulty of demonstrating how something does not work on your machine when someone else claims that it works on his machine is exacerbated by distance. We’ve had that experience , and it was not fun. Our team has changed since, and I’m happy to say that we all come in to work and don’t have the same issues any more.
The team that has fun together stays together : You miss out on a lot of the good stuff when you’re working from home. At MoovieShoovie, we all come in and leave at different times, but we have lunch together. Talking and gossiping for this short thirty-minute period every day is an effective adhesive – it brings us closer so that we don’t have to do any “team-building activities” ( though, of course, we go out pretty much every fortnight). Employees who don’t come in miss that camaraderie. I wonder how they managed to build the team spirit at 37sig, wordpress et. al. when they were all in their individual cocoons.
That said, I think one of the unsaid points in all these articles was that people do creative work on their own schedule and not always from 9 am to 6 pm. I totally agree with that principle- it’s just that working in India needs a different model. Out here we are most productive when we come in to work, have reliable infrastructure and enjoy the face-to-face interactions. None of our meetings last more than 30 minutes, and we never have more than 2 a week. Almost everything can be resolved with a 45-second conversation across the table, so our email traffic is at a minimum. Which is a relief in itself.
BTW, we use Google sites to help us track weekly deliverables. What do other people use ?
Kissa twins Ka…
- By Deepa Joshi
One thing Bollywood has in common with Shakespeare is the love for stories with twins in them. So if Shakespeare gave us plays like The Comedy of Errors and Twelfth Night, Bollywood has given us umpteen movies with judwaas in them. And usually while one of them is soft and mild, the other is the bolder, more confident of the two.Here is a celebration to just that.
Dilip Kumar in Ram Aur Shyam where Ram is the mild one and Shyam the
confident one
Seeta Aur Geeta, one of Hema’s rise to fame movies. Seeta, the meek one and Geeta, the heroic one.
Who can forget Amitabh in Don. In a double role as Vijay, the Mr.Nice guy and Don, the underworld, well, Don.
Then there was Chalbaaz with Sridevi in the roles of Anju and Manju. An absolute treat for all Sridevi fans.
The most recent one was Kaminey. Shahid in a double role.While Guddu is a simpleton,his twin brother, Charlie is one whithout a conscience and ready to make a quick buck.
Finally, the one that I saved for the last, is comedy at its best..Angoor. With 2 pairs of identical twins played by Sanjeev Kumar and Deven Verma.
Mooshoo world map
– By Jyotsna Pattabiraman
In 40 countries (17.7%)
Openings at MoovieShoovie for engineers, QA and designers
We’re happy to announce that we have 3-4 openings at MoovieShoovie for two junior engineers, a QA lead and a designer.
Front-end engineer(s) : We have a requirement for a junior engineer with 0-2 years of experience in front-end technologies like HTML, Javascript and XML. This person will work with our designer and product team to deliver an exceptional user experience and have the opportunity to work on Facebook apps and the like. Must love technology, must have developed the odd app or website and must be a real go-getter. FT with excellent prospects.
Interaction/Graphic designer ( PT): Will work with our business and community teams to design the user experience. Will be on the leading edge of designing exceptionally useful and visually attractive UIs. This is a key PT role with the possibility of developing into a FT role. Portfolio is a must.
QA Lead : 3-5 years of experience with consumer apps, should understand how to test fast and test smart. Should have high standards and be willing to own the responsibility of delivering a stable and usable product to end users. FT/PT
Who we are : A media company that aims to make great Indian cinema accessible the world over. We are 3 FT and 1 PT person, all with graduate degrees. Our site has been launched in Beta since June . Traffic has been growing at 200% month over month, with visitors from 25 different countries visiting our site. We aim to use social media to leverage the inherent virality of Bollywood to make a market for streaming video, DVDs and merchandising. We promise both freedom and responsibility; and an outstanding experience for your career.
TV- Reality bites and fiction sucks !
– By Deepa Joshi
Read an entertainment headline today, Rakhi Sawant, after her tremendous success in ‘Rakhi ka Swayamvar’ is now going to be on ‘Pati, Patni Aur Woh’, another reality show. I almost doubled over, mostly with frustration, I think.
Tell me guys, do people really want to watch Rakhi Sawant on prime time TV, in a main character role? I cannot and will not digest this. Is the viewership so good for them to announce another show with her in a lead role? Is my mind so twisted that it cannot fathom this? The swayamvar ads were all over the place.Even those of us not following the show knew about it. Ask any child about swayamvar, and she/he will know because of Rakhi, not because of Sita.
Rakhi Sawant has gone up the ladder, from an item girl tag, she now has the tag of a REALITY STAR! I can now accept Shilpa Shetty’s leap to fame with Big Boss a little more easily. Can we not see the downward graph of our quality on TV?
Shilpa Shetty – > Rakhi Sawant -> What next?(Bobby Darling??Dont know who that is?Lucky You!!) Are we not going really wrong somewhere?
I am not saying we should start watching Ramayan. But we definitely are in dire need of sensible TV. We have such intelligent people in the industry and in the audience. I do not want to believe that shows like this is what ‘aam junta’ wants! The cycle has to end sometime, somewhere. Either the producers have to take a risk and not just go by ratings OR the audience, for the lack of anything else, instead of watching this, should turn the TV off, and turn the radio on!
Don’t we remember in the early 80s and part of 90s we had some terrible movies? Before that we had some masterpieces, and again, after that we have had a lot of directors, ready to risk making good movies. Am not referring to some low budget, no light, no make up actors showing us what bad things happen in the world today. I am talking about a Dil Chahta Hai, an Omkara and a Jab We Met, which made loads of money too..When there are good creative people ready to take a risk on a good script with confidence, producers will be ready to plunge too and vice versa.
We need that kind of revolution on TV. Some simple measures…
1)Lets not copy what is happening out in the west. Lets be original guys. Indians, through history, have been forerunners in so many things. Let’s try to get back there.
2)We need laughter on TV. Not cheap slapstick, but real good humor. I am sure our writers can think harder!
3)And please, oh please, let kids be kids! Don’t slap on makeup on them and ask them to say things, which I think, my granny used to say ! Remember Kachi Dhoop? Amol Palekar ji, where are you?We need more serials from the likes of you.
Write a review, win a prize !
- By Deepa Joshi
At MoovieShoovie, we strongly believe that talking about movies is almost as fun as watching them. We love to read reviews – we have read some hilarious ones, some provocative ones and some that are just really good writing. We thought we would give our members some excitement and some inspiration to share their thoughts by announcing a movie review contest ! The movies we selected this time are any of the following Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s films : Golmaal, Chupke Chupke , Khoobsoorat, Bawarchi and Guddi. You can go nuts with it…criticize it, praise it, basically put all your thoughts into it.
If your review is the most entertaining one, the crew at MoovieShoovie will reward you with one of the following:
A 15$ Amazon gift certificate if you live outside India
OR
A Rs.700 gift plus card if you live in India.
To enter the contest,here is what you need to do:
1)Register on MoovieShoovie using Facebook Connect – click the Facebook connect button. ( You can also do the plain vanilla registraion)
2)Go to the movie you want to review and click on the “Review this movie” link.
3)Write your review.
Rules and Regulations
1)Age must be 16 or above
2)By entering this competition you will be considered a registered member of MoovieShoovie and might hear from us time to time via email.
3)Reviews must be unique and not copy/paste.
4)The entries have to be sent before 19 Aug 2009.
5)The winner will be announced on 19 Aug 2009 and will have to claim their prize by 19 Sept 2009. The winner will be announced on 19 Aug 2009 at MoovieShoovie Blog and on Facebook…
Let the typing begin!!
Good luck…
P.S. We plan to have various kinds of contests on the website from time to time. You can give your feedback on the current idea and suggestions for new ones.
Everything Online..Just click your worries away!!
(Note : this is the first post by Deepa Joshi, our new community manager !)
Isn’t the Internet the best?I mean it was one of the best inventions ever..I know I cannot do without the phone or electricity, but after that,its got to be the net!! Add to it networking websites and blogs, and the sky becomes the limit. For hard core Indian movie buffs like me, i can never tire of hearing about what my favourite stars are up to. And now we have them actually blogging and telling us what is going on with them. When you read Aamir’s or Amitji’s blog, you actually feel like you know them personally.
Do you remember when we were growing up and all we had were videos to be rented out from a library(Could not imagine buying everytime !)? We used to be so excited to go rent a movie to watch. I would trudge along with my dad and brother to the little video library at the corner of the road and spend an hour looking through the list of movies written down by the library guy. This would lead to frustration since we would have no idea on the movie, the review etc.
It is quite awesome now..the digital age. Just go online , look through lists of movies, read their reviews and then make a fair decision on which you want to watch. There are plenty of websites out there which let you buy movies and rent DVDs.Then there are some which let you watch them online. But do remember not all of them are legal. So if you are someone who wants to erase piracy AND want to watch a good quality movie, then you have fewer choices. If you are looking for great desi movies including the age old classics like Gol Maal, Chupke Chupke or serious stuff like Pakeezah, there is one great website available and that is MoovieShoovie. This offers very good picture quality , a fantastic collection of movies and is legal! You want just a trailer or a song of your favourite movie?No problem.Thats possible too..
I for one am hooked!!
ISO : Community Manager for MoovieShoovie
MoovieShoovie aims to be the world’s largest community of Indian films and the people who love them. Since watching films is inherently a social activity, we are building features that will enable people to share about the films they love on platforms like Facebook and Twitter. We are looking for a community manager who can help facilitate this interaction. Seth Godin calls this job the #1 job of the future.
Requirements : If you love films, are sociable and know how to draw people out, if you can write well and have an interest in marketing/PR … then this might be the perfect fit for you. Degrees and previous experience are not important. We would like it very much if you would be able to provide some samples of writing , such as on a blog. Community experience, such as serving in a student organization, PTA or any other self-driven group would also go a long way in ensuring your success in this role.
About the role : This will be a key strategic role and you will be considered a part of the founding team. This is a opportunity for someone with an “offline” background to break into this space since such positions are not open often.
Day-to-day tasks : You will initiate and manage the conversation in today’s happening platforms like Facebook, Twitter and the blogosphere, which is a killer thing to put on the resume, not to mention loads of fun. In other words, your “job” will revolve around talking about films with your friends on Twitter, Facebook and blogs. You will influence product development on new community features and help the community overcome anxieties over participation. The yardstick by which your performance will be measured will be the activity and conversation on the site, and you are free to propose and make use of any and all methodolgies to faciliate this as long as they are not illegal, immoral or fattening. Ok, they can be fattening.
Location : Any, as long as you can make yourself available 1-2 times a week on IST.
Compensation : There won’t be a salary associated with this position at the outset, but if we all do well and raise funding, then you will be compensated . Equity will be offered . Flexible working hours make it ideal for someone who has opted out of the 9-5 grind. Also, all the movies you can watch : )
Still interested ? Great ! Drop us a line at jpattabi AT moovieshoovie DOT com
Welcome – Namaskar – 歡迎光臨 – Tervetuloa – Bienvenue -Καλώς Ορίσατε
23 countries and counting
That’s our user map. Just goes to show that people love Bollywood movies all over the world !
jpattabi
djoshir
