ABC – Always Be Curious!

If anyone tells you that you are born an introvert and gregariousness cannot be learned, look them in the eye and say, “You couldn’t be more wrong!”

Born in a conservative family in a small town in rural Southern India, I was always very happy with my solitude.  In fact, at one point I was anti-social to the extent that any social interaction would trigger a severe migraine (literally!).  If you’ve known my for the last 5-6 years, I’m sure your eyes are opening wide and your jaw dropping.  Yes, you can learn to be gregarious.  I did!

Picture it.  2009.  That was the time I didn’t know the definition of “social media” and wasn’t really keen on learning either.  I was happy being the only marketing person at that small startup. 

During the course of my MBA program, I attended a Women in Business event hosted by my business school, Santa Clara University.  The theme of the event was “Personal Branding”.  And when “social media gurus” that spoke at the event spoke about establishing one’s own brand identity, brand value and brand equity (yes, these are some very frequently used B-school terms), I couldn’t be more intrigued. Twitter was one of the first social media channels that became my experimental pad.  It helped me learn how to be social.  It taught me the easiest way to engage in a conversation where I still learned the most.  It helped me get rid of the “introvert” in me.  These are all reasons why I highly respect and value my Twitter network today!

Just like the three basic principles of real estate are “location, location and location”, the three basic rules for our growth (personally and professionally) are “network, network and network”.  Rate of your growth is directly proportional to your network. 

My recommendation to you — identify your personal and/or professional development goals.  Do a little research to understand the best ways you can connect with peers and experts that can help you learn and grow.  And then, just do it!  Engage with others.  The biggest revelation (the A-Ha! moment) for me was when I grasped the fact that everyone around me is so generous to help me learn!  Everyone is here to help, IF you are open to learning!

Stay curious.  Be eager to learn.  Know you cannot be correct always.  Keep an open mind.  Have a question?  Think it’s a stupid question?  It’s alright.  Ask away!  You will be happy you asked!  

Always ask yourself, “Why?”  Always Be Curious.  Those are the ABCs of my life.  I’ve been extremely lucky for establishing a massive support network that helps me learn, every waking moment.

If I can do it, you can too!

Mother: The One Irreplaceable Person In Your Life

Every one of us goes through the phase in our lives where we (a) know better than mom does and (b) wish mom hadn’t said/done that to embarrass us. However, we all have also realized that we wouldn’t be here today, without that one person cheering us all along…from the sidelines or on the other side of the phone (or world).

Mothers are the most amazing blessing we will ever be blessed with in our life.

On this Mother’s Day, and any other day, I raise my glass to toast for the two amazing mothers I’ve known throughout my life–my mother and my sister. They are the two most beautiful women in my life that have inspired me, guided me and supported me through every step of my life.

Thank you, mom. Thank you, sis. I love you both.

Panel Event: Moving Up The Ladder

Today, I had the opportunity (thank you, Cindy!) to share my career transition and all the hurdles I crossed so far. I was very honored to be on the panel along with some very fine professionals such as Ramon, Elena, Vijai and Komal.

I wanted to share with you some of the golden nuggets that my fellow panelists shared today.

Get out of your comfort zone.
Ask questions.
Negotiate; because you don’t get what you deserve but you get what you negotiate.
Show initiative.
Establish credibility.
Connect. Learn. Influence.
Know when to exit (job/company/business).
Own your career.
Develop soft skills; you can’t acquire those from books/schools.
Career setbacks can become your growth opportunity.

And last, but the most important nugget – Network! Network! Network!

From South India to South Bay!

Santa Clara University.  These three words mean a LOT to me.  They mean more the three letters they gave me in my resume – MBA.

Born and raised in a very small town in southern India, I come from a culture and a community that is nowhere similar to the culture and community I currently live in the Bay Area of California.

In my first quarter at MBA at Santa Clara University in Fall 2006, there wasn’t a single day that I did not think that I was making a mistake.  I felt that I did not (and maybe, could not) “fit in”.  If you know me or have met me in the past couple of years, you will not believe even a single ounce of what I’ve said here so far.

So what changed?  I did.

I opened up my mind to fight the challenges I faced throughout this transition.  I fought those stereotypes that many people used in order to identify me.  I got out of my comfort zone.  I did things that I wouldn’t have normally done, such as – ask a Product Manager or a Product Marketing Manager out for a coffee or lunch, so I could learn what a day in their life looks like.  I learned to ask questions, and a lot of them.  I became less afraid of asking questions, even if I thought they were stupid questions.  One of the industry experts that spoke at an event told me there were NO stupid questions. I always remembered that – no one will help unless you ask!

So, today, why do I revisit this stage from my past?  Santa Clara University.   Those three words.  And few more: Women in Business Conference.

SCU hosts the Annual Women in Business Conference and I am very honored to be a panelist in one of the workshops this year where we get to share our experiences with the attendees.

If you are in the Bay Area this weekend and can spend your precious Saturday with us on-campus at SCU, I cordially invite you to register and come by to share your experiences with us and the current MBA students at SCU.

A New Chapter…

When I read this blog the first time, I felt that it couldn’t be any truer.  I tweeted that link and got at least half a dozen RT’s and “+1s”.  But when I look at myself today, I am extremely proud and happy that I am the perfect counter example for this statement.  You see, my pet peeve #215 is a “blanket statement”, because there are always counter-examples for such statements.  I digress.

Today, I bring my Symantec journey to an end.  After almost a three year run at Symantec, I resume my journey at Citrix.

These few years at Symantec have been nothing but phenomenal for me.  I’ve been given many opportunities to make mistakes, learn and grow in my career.   I moved from Citrix to Symantec in mid-2011 to join Symantec’s App Virtualization and Streaming group.  From there, my journey led me to a network security product and then brought me to Enterprise Mobility when Symantec acquired Nukona.  These two years of my Product Marketing life with Symantec App Center have been beyond fantastic.  I entered one of the hottest topics in the industry, worked on strategic activities at Symantec, met the most elite folks in the community (huge thanks to Twitter), made some long lasting friendships and learned more than a lifetime’s worth!

I also want to take a moment to thank the three managers I had while I was with Symantec – Brian Duckering, Chandra Rangan and Travis Grandpre.  They are some of the best folks I’ve ever worked for.  I loved working for each of them!  Thank you so much, guys, for being the best managers that you’ve been to me!  I wouldn’t be here today without your support, motivation and more important, your confidence in me.

Along with these inspirational leaders, I had the opportunity to work with many many more fantastic people while at Symantec.  My Sales and SE teams have been the best!  The regional teams, integrated marketing team, education team, regional product management and product management teams — each team had their own way of inspiring  me in every step of my career at Symantec.

With a sad and a heavy heart, I leave my family that I’ve built at Symantec to join Citrix’s XenMobile team with Chandra and Ahmed.  I am very excited to be part of the X(Z)en team and look forward to many such successful milestones at Citrix.

The excitement (and the journey) continues.

My iPad was erased….now what?

<gasp> Imagine that panicky moment when you realize that your kids tried to unlock your work iPad’s password one too many times and the device is now reset to factory defaults.  Add to that mix the fact that you had not backed up the device for at least the past one month! <gasp> <gasp> <Somebody get me my brown bag!!>

Yup!  I went through that exact emotion (alright alright, I will admit, ‘horror’) very recently.  But then, I realized, I had nothing to worry about.  Here’s why.  There are two types of info we all care for on our smartphones and tablets: Personal and Corporate info.  Since this was my corporate iPad, life became much simpler.

• Personal Info:  I just had my social media apps and very few pictures that came through the “sync” I’d done in the past.  Fortunately, I do not fall into this category:

The remaining personal files I have…are already on my Dropbox.  So technically, I have not lost anything.

• Corporate Info:  This was even least of my concerns.  All my corporate information, including email, are delivered by our Symantec App Center app.  All I had to do re-download the agent, and voila!  I was back on track with my corporate apps.  It was as if nothing had happened to my iPad at all.

I am pretty sure this does not come as any surprise to many of you.  And yes, coming from the land of mobility, it doesn’t sound surprising to me either.  However, going through this experience myself (and without any deliberate device resets!) was very convincing to me that we have a great technology!  Thanks Symantec 🙂

Mobile devices have pampered us and changed the way we just expect things to work.  Regardless of where we are, how our devices function, whether or not our devices are reset, we expect to be back up and running in no time.  I am so excited to be part of this mobility movement.  As we all say, there is no dull moment in the mobile world!

Every step you take…

Reminds of you of The Police, eh?  I couldn’t resist using that as the title for this post.  Every step I take during my waking moments (and if you know me, you know that there are a lot of these!) I learn something new.

As a working mom, I have the opportunity to multitask; and not all of it is by choice. I still couldn’t ask for a better way to learn.  Right from (a) making breakfast, tea, packing lunches, getting kids and myself ready for the day to (b) managing work, meetings, social media and socializing in the office to (c) bringing kids home, their homework, dinner and finally, (d) back to working for a few hours before I call it a day – there is never a dull moment in my day.

I learn from my kids – the art of innocence.  Regardless of the day, the injuries and the attitudes, kids somehow are successful in bringing so much cheer and joy in our lives.  As tiring as our days get, one hide-and-seek game and I feel like a kid again!

I learn from my team – about how to succeed.  I am very lucky to be part of a fantastic team at Symantec.  Every individual brings with them such great expertise and experience that even a five-minute conversation with any one of them makes me feel so enlightened.

I learn from my tweeps – a LOT of things.  No, that is not an exaggeration.  I feel lucky and blessed to be surrounded by such brainpower on twitter.  The topics they talk about and the level of conversations they have are just mind-boggling.   I have learned about so many technologies just by eavesdropping on such conversations and by reading the blog posts that these experts write.

And when I put my kids to bed and get back to work – I reminisce about my day and realize how productive, cheerful and exciting my day has been as I cheerfully look forward for the next day.

For a change, I wanted to blog about me.  I had always wanted to, but was never sure how it would be received.  But today, I remembered what Sudheesh said: “write for yourself; not for others.  Write because YOU want to.”

Marathons and Half-Marathons, the Twitter Way.

Yesterday I wrote about my entry into Twitterville.

I felt that it would only be useful to follow that post with some details on how I manage my work, personal and social lives.  If you have heard that there is such a thing called work/life balance or day/night difference, then you did not come from me.

When I met George yesterday, he had a question for me: How have I managed to get to 16k+ tweets?  My answer: events.

Tech conferences are like marathons for my tweet count.  So why do I tweet extensively during events?  The answer’s simple – to network.  I tweet using the event’s hashtag (for example, Mobile World Congress this year had #MWC13 as its hashtag).  I keep an eye out for people who tweet about similar topics at that event. I strike a conversation with them and meet that person while I am there.  I started slowly with a couple of events.  I was cognizant of the feed that appears to my followers and never felt comfortable spamming their feed with tweets from a conference they wouldn’t care.  However, with twitter clients such as tweetbot (the one I use) one can enable “mute filters” to mute the tweets with certain keywords or hashtags from appearing in their feed.

My half-marathons are tweetchats.  My participation started with #mobilebiz, a tweetchat hosted by Brian and Benjamin every Thursday on various topics around Enterprise Mobility.  There are a few other tweetchats (I will share the list of chats I follow/participate).

Find your topic of interest, look for people that are active on that topic and start slow by following their conversations.  When you feel you’re ready, engage in conversation.

Remember, twitter is not about selling your products.  Rather, it is about engaging in a conversation with like-minded people.  Think of it this way: when you go to a party, you don’t start pitching your own brand; you engage in conversation and win people’s attention.  Twitter works the same way.  Use the right tool for the right task.

Tweet on!

PS:  I could get Sean and Brian to tweet…a big deal for me 🙂

Building Your Social Network

No, I am not going to talk about the movie Social Network.  Uh-uh.  I never even got past the first 15 minutes of watching that movie. I just couldn’t do it.  So I don’t think I am the right person to talk about it; positively or not.  I digress (which happens often, if you have met me in person at least once 😉 ).

If you have been following on twitter, or if we met in person because we’ve been connected on twitter for a while now, you already know how passionate my opinions about Twitter are.  I take my Twitter seriously (now I tweet occasional rants and ramblings, but hey, it is in disclaimer already).  Twitter, as any other social media platform, is a tool; a tool that can help or hurt your social identity.

Thanks to my friend, Cindy, I learned that Twitter exists and people have conversations on the same topic with something called a hashtag.  It was one of our first Santa Clara University Business Alumni events and Cindy mandated we all tweet during the event.  This was back in 2009.  After that day, I went quiet on twitter because, well, I thought it was boring! <gasp> I know…I know…there was a time when I thought Twitter was a complete waste of time.

So what changed?

Picture it.  May 2011.  Citrix Synergy.  (a la Sophia style)

I was with Citrix back then and I couldn’t attend the signature event, then held in San Francisco.  However, I didn’t let that stop me from keeping myself in tune with the event and the happenings at the venue.  I sought the help of Twitter.  That’s when I started to have conversations with SO many people (Steve, Shawn, Geert, Anton, Rob, Doug, Henrik and of course, my own teammate/mentor Mayank).

And when I moved to my current role at Symantec, I knew nothing about Enterprise Mobility.  However, by following the tweets from my mobile elitists, I learned a lot faster and got a lot smarter.  I not only learned about the technology, but also got a good understanding of the industry and how the businesses are changing.  Brian, Benjamin, Bob, Philippe, James, Colin, Phil, and Nick, among others, have been very kind in sharing their opinions, blogs, comments and thoughts with people like myself on twitter.

So how do you use Twitter?  Similar to any technology, do not use it because everyone else does.  Use the right tool for the right reasons.  Are you trying to build a twitter network for yourself in professional world?  Search for experts/analysts/journalists in the space you’re interested in and start following their tweets.  You do not have to participate; just follow the conversation.  Try to participate in that conversation, even if it is just a simple response or a retweet.  And if you can continue the conversation, well, you are like me 🙂

As with any other skill, start slow.  Take baby steps.  Remember…you are an expert in what you do.  Twitter cannot possibly be harder than that 😉

Tweet on!

Cheers to Steve!

So Steve tweeted today about his contest.

While it is okay for me to not attend Synergy, it is hard to pass up the opportunity to attend one and more importantly, the golden opportunity to meet some of the tech industry’s smartest people, especially when that group includes Steve!

So why am I interested in meeting Steve? Because he is…

• one of the smartest people I’ve met on twitter
• multi-talented (he is not just a techie, but also composes music!)
• a CTP (if you don’t know what that means, pfftt…don’t even bother)

And I really want to go to the Happiest Place on Earth (well, at least to the ‘hood)! 🙂