Sharpening the tools.

There were two wood cutters lived in a village. One young and the other old.  They young one in his mid twenties was full of life. While old one is mid fifties was little worn out of the cutting wood for last 25 years.

One day younger one told the elder one,  Let us have a competition to see who can cut more woods.  The older on accepted the challenge. The next day morning both of them went to forest to cut woods at same time.

As soon as they reached the forest the younger one jumped to job. He worked hard and hard. Trees started falling one by one. While elder one worked for an hour.  He got tired. He took a break for 15 minutes.  Then he started again. After an hour he took another break again. He continued till evening like this.

It is evening and and time for them to get back to home.  They counted the trees.  To the younger one's surprise the elder one had cut more tress than him. The younger one asked elder how could you were able to cut more tress? You worked less time than me!  The elder one replied son, while I was resting I was sharpening my tools. So after the rest I could cut more fast.  You were working hard morning and soon your tools got worn out...

Do we have correct tools in our job?  Do we take time learn new tools? sharpen our tools?  It is not how much you work or how much time you spend at work not matters. It all matters how do you work.

Getting Lost

I am still in waiting mood to get out of this place. The "process" kills companies and humans. The anxiety and pressure of relocation is hitting me.  The doubting mind always ask you questions on your decisions you made. Are they correct?

You get lot of information from everywhere. How do you keep focussed and not get lost.  The only way is to have clear vision about your destination. This helps you to keep focussed.

This is the challenging part in my life to identify the destination what I need and what I want. I think I should focus and figure out and focus what should I do in life.

I read this blog from Subroto Bagchi http://www.mindtree.com/subrotobagchi/the-singed-mango-tree/.  It is just inspring and I am waiting for tomorrow.

Data Scientist and SOA

It is all Big Data now.  It is new hammer on the average Joe Software Engineer and who only see nails. 


The other day I was talking to a friend who is Big Data practice head for IT service company. He says every IT department want to have some Big Data project.  They are even thinking of productized solution called "Data Scientist in a box".  Putting HBase cluster and selling it to IT.


I read  today on "Cloud data Scientist be your next Job?"  http://www.networkworld.com/news/2012/060412-data-scientist-259697.html


The article says  data scientist is the one who can connect business problems to Business Problems, Data and Mathematical models.  It thought it was something used heavily but Financial Industry (Actuarial Science) ? 


Here it goes in the article  "Donald Farmer, vice president of product management at business intelligence software maker QlikView, says most enterprises can make use of data scientists to improve processes and identify new business opportunities. For instance, in financial services, data scientists can develop algorithms for trading and risk management, and in pharmaceuticals they can study drug test results."


So Data scientist and Big data technologies can make Actuarial Service more accessible?  


Or it is more a Data Journalist as Martin Fowler talks in this presentation. http://www.infoq.com/presentations/The-Evolving-Panorama-of-Data  


To conclude let me pull I read another article I read today.  http://service-architecture.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/thinking-is-dead.html

I am seeing some new nails to hit with big data skills...