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Showing posts from October, 2017

Checklist for product developers to market products

Stepahnie Hurlburt, a Graphics Engineer & Entrepreneur has tweeted a very useful checklist for software developers releasing Open Source products and tools to help in their adoption. I think the checklist can be used by all product developers / marketers to improve adoption. Here goes the list, you can also read it on this Tweet Thread  here or go to Stephanie's Twitter handle here . “Why isn’t someone using my software product or open source tool? It’s good!” A checklist for you: Have you described what it is and what the benefits are in a way a non-developer can understand? If someone Googles to try to learn more about it, is this description easy to find? Is this description easily skimmable? If someone looks at it for 6 seconds can they be convinced? Do you compare your tool to other similar tools so people feel educated about pros/cons of yours? If performance matters, do you have easy-to-skim benchmarks that include comparing it to other tools? Do you

Why is it hard to scale a services business?

Jim Collins has been researching and writing about the Flywheel as a value of enterprises. For those who may not know, here his most famous illustration - the Amazon Flywheel. Lower prices led to more customer visits. More customers increased the volume of sales and attracted more commission-paying third-party sellers to the site. That allowed Amazon to get more out of fixed costs like the fulfillment centers and the servers needed to run the website. This greater efficiency then enabled it to lower prices further. In another article , Jim writes - " those who drive companies into decline often abandon the big thing they already have, grasping instead for a new big thing, then another and another, falling into a doom loop of chronic inconsistency " While not written in the article above, but my experience says that 'Consulting / System Integrator Services' is plagued by this particular phenomenon. Consulting firms are forced to move from one "next big thi

Presidential Election under the Indian Constitution
Addendum: Why is the Indian Constitution Unique

I have mentioned in past that "If the Indian constitution is a copy of the British and American systems, it’s the most intelligent and well customised copy ever made" Today, I discovered another small tid-bit of a quirk adopted by the makers of the Indian constitution, the need for which is now being felt even in the US. This feature is called "Single Transferable Vote" also known as " instant-runoff ". This feature is used by the Indian constitution to prevent any stalemate or gridlock (something the US legislative system has experienced), in the Presidential Elections.  STV/IRV used in single-seat elections with more than two candidates. Instead of voting only for a single candidate, voters in IRV elections can rank the candidates in order of preference. Ballots are initially counted for each elector's top choice. If a candidate secures more than half of these votes, that candidate wins. Otherwise, the candidate in last place is eliminated