Among all the social-business networking sites, I find Ecademy and LinkedIn to be the best ones. Ecademy is my favorite since it has very nicely integrated offline networking in its system which results in creating trusted networks.

I experienced a very nice group-problem-solving technique called Virtual Tables during an offline networking event organized by Ecademy. I found it to be very effective. It can be extremely beneficial if practiced in a trusted network.

What you need:

• People who are interested in helping each other
• Ninety minutes (1 1/2 hour) 
• Paper / Pen to take notes

This is how it works:

Group together

It works best in a group of six-seven participants. If there are many more members, they should arrange themselves in group of six participants. I feel that it works best when the group is of people from diversified field (different businesses, departments, etc.). I think (not yet tested) that it will work best if people with same kind of responsibilities participate together (all business owners, all managers, all programmers, etc.).

All participants sit around a table. Every participant has 12-15 minutes by turn.

Now its your turn

When your turn comes, you can table your problem. Generally people table their biggest concern, dilemma, situation, issue they are facing in few minutes. The other participants of your group come up with their own solutions, point-of-views and ideas to help you. Since different people come from different backgrounds and have different ways to solve a problem, it is amazing to see how many fantastic ideas pops up. These sessions are generally filled with why-i-did-not-think-of-this-before sighs. This collective brainstorming delivers a list of suggestions that are diverse in nature and gives a new approach to solve the same problem.

It is like having five consultants serving you for fifteen minutes with their subject matter knowledge and common sense with an honest intention coming from an absolutely independent chair to help you out!

Take notes & rotate

You should take notes of the ideas. I suggest you note down all the ideas and spend some time back home thinking over them and considering the solutions offered by different people on the table. For the time being, you shall rotate the strike and the next guy should now table his/her problem and you should become a part of the elite panel of consultants who will help bail him/her out!

An important note:

It is utmost importance to maintain the privacy and confidentiality of the discussion. The purpose of the virtual tables is to help and get help. It may take time for members to trust each other, but once a trust network is formed, the effectiveness just multiplies and it keeps growing with the speed of trust.

So, go out and try this to discover a stress-free way of solving your problems (and others’ too)!

Blogs have fueled the growth of peer-to-peer information flow in form of news, knowledge packets, ideas and individual point-of-views. However it has also resulted in "Information overload" which drives a normal person nut as he is at risk to wasting too much time reading the flesh before he reaches the crust.

Learning becomes more difficult as we face a situation where we have less time and most if it is wasted while absorbing the excess information and then an equal amount of effort (if not more) is required to skim the real message out of it.

A hot debate is going on at - http://guydz.com/moneypowerwisdom/?p=19

I personally think:

A summary can solve all the problem. There are people who understand the concept in few words. They hate to read through long articles to get that “dosage” of knowledge.

However, there are lots of people who might have difficulty in understanding the concept. There may be several people who might not accept a point of view unless backed with examples from real life.

Therefore both formats are required in my opinion.

Now the question is - On a media like blog, do we have enough time to summarize the ideas that we put together?

 What do you think?

There is a mad rush out here. Large swanky new shopping malls are opening every month to give the desired lifestyle to the next-generation Indians who believe in “work hard – party harder”. An average middle class Indian is earning well and want to live life BIG size.

When I was in Bath (U.K.) in 1999-2000, the difference in lifestyle (between India and U.K.) used to amaze me. I dreamt that one day India will follow suit. But I never thought that it will be so soon!  A lot of credit goes to the new age industries like IT, Biotechnology, Telecommunication followed by resurgence in media, real-estate, finance and retail.

So many new, dynamic and high-net-worth consumers are being created.

But, if you read the fine prints, we are jumping on to eat the fruits before it has ripened and are not putting enough effort to plan new trees.

We are growing because of the knowledge economy. Keeping this fact in mind, it is time that we ask some hard questions –

What are we doing to keep our self at the forefront of this economy?
Do we create and disseminate knowledge which will keep us at the ahead of competition?
Do we have enough universities and institutions which can equip our next generation of knowledge workers?
How will we educate such a fast growing population?
How will we learn to be creative and not repetitive?

The truth is – Our education system is pre-historic and there is no radical transformation since independence in 1947. There is no impetus on practical knowledge and original creation.

And the worst news is that we are trying to open more malls than quality educational institutions. We are happy with our IIT and IIM legacy which creates few thousand professionals every year. We are happy to quote these names and feel proud that these are few of the most respected institutions worldwide. Now ask few more questions:

What percentage of people in India wants to have higher education?
Out of this, what percentage actually gets quality higher education?
How many original world changing inventions have been done at IIT or IIM?
Where are the IIT & IIM alumni? How many of them are contributing towards the growth of India?
How many of IIT & IIM alumni have taken on the responsibility to spread the knowledge they have acquired?

The answers will give the real state of affairs!

For continued progress, India needs a mechanism to produce quality people. For that we need hundreds of quality institutions. Some of them will grow to become “center of excellence” like MIT, Stanford and CMU. But others should not be far behind!

Before, our government and business houses deliver the glamorous new India, they need to sit back and work out how to create the drivers of the new economy.

We need universities, not malls. Considerable amount of investments and efforts should be directed to create a conductive environment to create academia along with the industry. One cannot grow without the other.

The conclusion is:
We are reaping the harvest of the seeds that we sowed years back! But we are not sowing new seeds to secure our future. Let us do that before it is too late!