I have been working on adding features and organizing our blog since last night. The most important feature for me is to open comments for everyone.
I have added a simple math question instead of captcha which everyone adds, to avoid SPAM. I am sure you will like it and auto spammers won’t be able to crack it easily.
Secondly, I have worked a bit on Category and Tagging. Though I do not know that in an era of tagging what use is Category? I have limited the number of categories by merging them into few. To make content discovery easy, we will be adding Tags lavishly.
Seeing that there are tags now, I have added the tags also on sidebar.
There are few cool tools on inserting multimedia in blog posts. I just used Slide show, and feel that it makes images look pretty cool.
The template still needs some work, for one, the logo still is missing. Additionally, I will be doing a few static pages and mobile sites’ template too.
Thanks Anagat for suggestions. I cannot wait to start writing on One97 business and work. Do you know of few apps or plugins that are useful? Let me know.
It’s been long since I wrote on a blog. I remember writing regularly in 1999 & 2000 on my website vijayshekhar.net (this domain is no more with me, you can see vijayshekhar.com instead). That was more personal and very less about my work.
Times have changed. Web has reached from 1.0 to its web 2.0 incarnations. I loved the concept of web 2.0 i.e. of the people by the people. That’s exactly Internet anyways was supposed to be, always.
I have been working for a while on “the right blogging platform” we should be using here. I tried Google’s blogger but did not find it so powerful. Word press still makes lot of sense with its very open architecture and plug-in/widgets approach.
From setting up a new instance to reworking on already installed version, I am finally happy. I got it up and running the way I wanted. I also got chance to work on some PHP and HTML after so long. For a person like me, who has very less opportunity to look at raw code in day’s work, it was very refreshing and fun. Though it took lot of time, I loved it all thoroughly.
Incidentally, this is also my first post on our One97’s blog. I am very much going to be a regular here. If you permit my personal ideas and thoughts, I could write many more posts.
Do you think I should write about something in particular? Post your comment and let me know.
Cheers!
Family is an oft-used (or abused?) suffix in the corporate world. With best compliments from XYZ family. More often than not, the “F” word used in such cases means: We are a group of individuals pretending to be of one mind. We love our differences so much that we never give up on them. Each one of us sticks out like a sore thumb in our team. A family of sore thumbs. (Yukkk!)
Before
Impressions! One97 gives you the signal for a complete U turn on this one. Having been around for two years, I can say so without feeling like a sore thumb. We were less than 100 when I joined. We were of course family back then. Work would happen overnight on projects with horrid deadlines like it happens for weddings in a family. We would greet each-other like cousins. Space crunch forced us to have mega-lunches each day, which caused a lot of chatter like what happens over huge dining tables. If we had problems with each-other, we would sort it out among us. Any eventuality like someone falling ill met with people offering their cars, cash, credit cards and full-time help with movement to hospital. One hears stories of when fire struck an old office, how everyone gathered in clusters working from somebody’s home. We would share our joys as we shared our sorrows.
After
We are almost 500 now. We are spread across buildings, or at least floors. It is natural to imagine that now we cannot be family. But we can! The only difference is that now the one big family has branched out into many small units. So the teams have become the branches, with members supporting, standing up, and watching over each other. Tiffs happen. But people never stay sore with each other beyond a day or two at max. Teamwork, eh?
The culture spreads with our first name policy, majorly subsidized travel together, the bus trips to and from the office and having fun on Fridays. What really makes us one big family are things like the waves of applause originating from one end, and spreading all over the floor for reasons unknown to the other corner, but the enthusiasm of this other corner is no less: truly a One97 phenomenon!
Extended Family
When I was growing up, there would be days when my dad would come home obviously stressed out. He would depend on his family to de-stress, but never shared his work-woes.
Cut to today. I see how the extended family, i.e. the spouses at One97 and in certain cases even the children indirectly or directly participate and contribute.
We have had people having their spouses test our apps and point bugs and flaws in the user experience.
A little girl came in handy when we needed a child’s voice. Voiceover fee: a couple of chocolates.
A little boy had his views on what kind of apps would work with kids and so on.
How can one forget the rigors of waiting for their spouses to turn up when late, and support in general?
So you see, dear family: family we were, family we stay and family we will always be.
When Farheen wrote Fun @ One97, mentioning our forthcoming Goa trip, all of us only knew a Goa trip was coming up. But none of us who went to Goa had any idea how much fun this fun would turn out to be, until we lived every minute of it!
Goa, a dream, which comes true for some lucky ones like us! All thanks to the fantastic spirit of One97. If the company believes in working hard, it leaves no stone unturned in partying equally hard. Whatever trips we have been on so far in the last few years — be it rafting in Rishikesh, or adventure at Shoghi in Himachal — the office has subsidized them, most of the times 50% or even more of the cost, enabling more and more of us to participate.
Goa was something else: Dad of all trips!! About 60 of us went together. We flew from Delhi on the 9th October morning and back to Delhi on 12th night, stayed at a hotel for all those 4 days and 3 nights, with food and even a boat cruise up the Mandovi thrown in. For many of us this trip symbolized many firsts: Some flew for the first time in their lives; some saw a disco for the first time, and most of us were stepping on the “holy” soil of Goa for the first time!
What a trip punctuated with laughter all along! We moved in groups in two hired small buses and several cars, and had every ounce of fun that was possible. We frolicked at the beaches, sat talking in coffee shops till the first light of the morning, danced in bathroom slippers till the discos closed, danced to live music being played at a restaurant while sitting, among many more crazy things. The only one thing people did not do over this trip was to sleep enough. But no one was complaining. See pics here.
When we got back to work after this trip, despite the Goa-hangover, it was all full-steam at work back again. Oh, what a happy ending… or only a pause until we go somewhere again?
One more picture set from facebook post:
Being a part of a growing organization is always exciting. But with the excitement come a number of things to do to set the house in order. One of the biggest challenges that one faces in this regard is keeping the employees engaged at all points in times. This engagement is not limited to just providing a great office, infrastructure, challenging work and inspiring leader…it also involves giving people an opportunity to let their hair down and relax.
Over the last six months we have struggled to get more and more people involved in the “Fun Initiatives” that we undertake every week. Having a team with the average age of 25 does help, because once you get them in one place they will create a lot of excitement by themselves. So we decided to let people decide how they wanted to have fun and we would just act as facilitators.
Eureka! Though it is early days yet we feel we have a winning formula!
So the last fortnight has seen one dance night, one evening of fun and games ….including some street cricket and a visit to an amusement park. And next in this series is a trip to Goa followed by a rafting trip. Not everyone attended every event but every one did attend one or the other event.
However, this does not mean we will do away with events where everyone gets together!
