A few days ago I stumbled upon a blog Unlost. It’s a nice easy to read blog about finding direction in life. The publisher, Therese Schwenkler is a really friendly 20 something who provides food for the soul to (mostly) young adults, though I am sure anyone can use free advice.

I signed up for the newsletter and I will get one every Monday Morning, erm… evening, due to the time zone differences I suppose. Do have a look at the site and in case you like what you see, I suggest you sign up for the newsletter.

And no I wasn’t paid to endorse this, it’s straight from the heart.

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Therese also pointed me towards Study Hacks, a nice jugaadu blog (oh,its much more than that actually) by Cal Newport; a MIT PhD who is now an young academic who maintains a deep interest in the student life and beyond. While most of the blog revolves around as Cal puts it : “At the core of the Study Hacks student philosophy is to do less, but do what you do better” It’s surely much more than that. Advice on life beyond college, how to tackle college stress, test taking and suchlike. While there are many people who talk about such things, they are seldom student oriented. In that context, this is a great find.

People who enjoy Ramit Sethi and Ben Casnocha will surely enjoy him as well.

Rishabh Kaul is Economics & Engineering student at BITS Pilani who is interested in entrepreneurship and social innovation. Check out his profile at Linkedin or buzz him at rishabhkaul[at]gmail[dot]com

Articulation is a gift. So is clear construction of thought and so is presentation. When the three combine, it’s a killer combo.

I have heard tons of talks, few in person and many many more online.

During one of the Oscars (I think it was the 04 edition), there was a little 4 minute video playing in between the award presentation. One guy in that video said, “I think the wonderful thing about a good movie is that it reminds you of all the other good movies you have seen”.

That could be extended to good talks, or good books or amazing good.

Everytime I see a good talk, I am reminded of the talk delivered by Prof Robert Wolcott of Kellogg in front of my eyes at the World Business Dialogue.

Pay close attention to the Fort vs Ship analogy he uses, which is of tremendous importance when you try to figure the sort of work profile you would want in your job.

The number of people I have recommended this talk to, I cannot count.

Rishabh Kaul is Economics & Engineering student at BITS Pilani who is interested in entrepreneurship and social innovation. Check out his profile at Linkedin or buzz him at rishabhkaul[at]gmail[dot]com

As promised in the last post, my writings are being showcased on numerous platforms and the latest of them being BeyondProfit, a publication of Intellecap.They recently introduced me on their blog as a guest blogger. This means that while I am a staff writer for Nextbillion, in my free time time I contribute exclusive content to a variety of other publications, and since Beyond Profit is a platform that I admire, I decided to forge a relationship with them and provide them with content. Of course they were kind enough to give me the opportunity to do so (Thanks Adrienne!).

My first article for them is an interview I had conducted of Dr G N Rao, the MD of L V Prasad Eye Institute.

Beyond Profit’s twitter round ups are especially useful by the sheer number of companies they’re profiling. Do check that out, it’s written everyday.

Rishabh Kaul is Economics & Engineering student at BITS Pilani who is interested in entrepreneurship and social innovation. Check out his profile at Linkedin or buzz him at rishabhkaul[at]gmail[dot]com

I recently wrote an article on rural BPOs for Triple Pundit, one of the bigger blogs outthere that focus on the triple bottom line approach. Jen, the managing editor was extremely responsive (Thanks Jen!).

Here’s the post, that’s titled Rural Development with Internation Business Outsourcing. I have also starting contributing articles to a host of other really great blogs dedicated to responsible enterprises and development, more on that as and when things roll out.

Coming back to rural BPOs I am doing a more detailed post for Nextbillion, which should come out in sometime. If you or anyone you know can add value to this post by sharing opinions, just shoot me a mail at rishabhkaul at gmail dot com and we’ll get talking.

Rishabh Kaul is Economics & Engineering student at BITS Pilani who is interested in entrepreneurship and social innovation. Check out his profile at Linkedin or buzz him at rishabhkaul[at]gmail[dot]com

This is analagous to the issue of slavery faced by Abraham Lincoln or the issue of Nazism faced by Winston Churchill. On those kind of issues you cannot compromise. You can’t say let’s reduce slavery, let’s find a compromise and reduce it 50% or reduce it 40%.

Says James Hansen, the leading climate change expert and scientist, while explaining how the world leaders today are facing a moral dilemma but yet try to compromise. And he’s openly criticizing Obama as well as Gore.

He is also opposing the cap and trade legislation that the US congress wants to pass. About that, he says

This is analogous to the indulgences that the Catholic church sold in the middle ages. The bishops collected lots of money and the sinners got redemption. Both parties liked that arrangement despite its absurdity. That is exactly what’s happening. We’ve got the developed countries who want to continue more or less business as usual and then these developing countries who want money and that is what they can get through offsets [sold through the carbon markets].

(via this piece in the Guardian)

I am waiting to get my hands on his book Storms of my Grandchildren. I love these analogies of his. Also, speaking of the cap and trade legislature, check out this short film titled story of Cap ad Trade. It’s part of an existing series of shorts called Story of Stuff. Check it out. It’s already sparked off discussions about which is the best way to tackle climate change. A lot of experts want to tax high carbon emitting fuels to ward off their consumption and move to more ecofriendly way instead of dealing with carbon credits.

Lets see how things turn out. 2 weeks notice has been put up to seal the deal.

Rishabh Kaul is Economics & Engineering student at BITS Pilani who is interested in entrepreneurship and social innovation. Check out his profile at Linkedin or buzz him at rishabhkaul[at]gmail[dot]com

While a lot of my friends are into it (snigger, its an insider joke), I am not that huge a photography buff. However from time to time, I do prefer to look at visual ecstacy when the verbal diarrhea around me takes its toll.

In the Indian blogosphere, I came across Akshay Mahajan a long while ago, who I am sure most of you know by now. He’s known as lecercle online. Apart from his snaps, its the random snaps that some of my friends share on google reader and the not so fascinating snaps that people dump onto the ultimate repository of all the information in the world that I glance by.

Thankfully, there’s something better out there for me to see. And for you too! It goes by the name of Stuck in Customs and is apparently the #1 Travel Photography Blog out there (self proclaimed, yes, but oh well, wouldn’t you do the same?).

Here’s a teaser:

See you there.

Rishabh Kaul is Economics & Engineering student at BITS Pilani who is interested in entrepreneurship and social innovation. Check out his profile at Linkedin or buzz him at rishabhkaul[at]gmail[dot]com

Basab writes a very hilarious albeit intriguing post on bribery in Indian elections

Today, bribing voters has become so common that all serious candidates must spend a good chunk of their election funds on it. Since other issues matter little (fomenting communal hatred being an important exception), candidates must compete with each other on the quantum of bribes per voter. This is good for the economy as it redistributes wealth from industrial houses and foreign corporations to the aam aadmi. Also, almost all the money distributed as voter bribes is spent immediately which gives a boost to local businesses like country liquor distilleries. In total, the voter bribes industry now accounts for an estimated 2 percent of GDP and about 50 basis points of annual GDP growth.

Oh but it gets better, check this out:

At the G-20 summit later this week, as world leaders discuss what each country is doing to restart the global economy, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will argue that voter bribes in the runup to the general election should be treated as India’s ’stimulus package’.

He further elaborates on the innovations that have been taking place in this domain. Do give it a read.

At the same time I wonder if one could take a leaf out of his book and apply it to the relatively non-existent BITSian politics. Sam chats? Mosquito nets? Beer?

Rishabh Kaul is Economics & Engineering student at BITS Pilani who is interested in entrepreneurship and social innovation. Check out his profile at Linkedin or buzz him at rishabhkaul[at]gmail[dot]com

Here are some cool links to check out

Rishabh Kaul is Economics & Engineering student at BITS Pilani who is interested in entrepreneurship and social innovation. Check out his profile at Linkedin or buzz him at rishabhkaul[at]gmail[dot]com

Richard Millington while trying to bag an internship with Seth Godin came up with an excellent post which I feel deserves to be shared.

Someone will have a better job than you.

Someone will have a more attractive spouse than you.

Someone will have a better home than you.

Someone will be more famous than you.

So what?

Measuring yourself against others is dumb. It creates tension, rivalry and you might end up chasing someone else’s goals just to beat him.

The only thing you should measure yourself against are your own objectives. Are you where you want to be in life? Are you as far along in your strategy as you should be?

The moment you begin comparing yourself against others, you have missed the point of having a dream.

Pretty true. And what fascinated me here is how easily we forget this advice. Just think about this for a minute: When was the last time you wanted to do something or take part in something just because others were involved in it?

Rishabh Kaul is Economics & Engineering student at BITS Pilani who is interested in entrepreneurship and social innovation. Check out his profile at Linkedin or buzz him at rishabhkaul[at]gmail[dot]com

Please light a candle to show your support for the innocent and brave souls who gave their life away. Or if you happen to possess a weblog or two, please change its template to something white. Or perhaps, wear a white shirt for an hour to show that you care. And in the meantime, sign the petition to stop terrorism as well as an open letter. If we collect a billion signatures, we will show to the terrorists that they have not harmed us. Divided we fall; true, but we are anything but divided. We want to show to the terrorists through our peace marches and our open letters that they have wasted their effort in attacking us.

Rishabh Kaul is Economics & Engineering student at BITS Pilani who is interested in entrepreneurship and social innovation. Check out his profile at Linkedin or buzz him at rishabhkaul[at]gmail[dot]com