That’s what the headmaster of a local school told John Wood, a Microsoft executive in 1998 after he had just completed the eighteen day, two-hundred mile trek of Nepal’s Annapurna mountain range. John did return to Nepal with books and started Room to Read. Today over 20,000 communities in 15 countries have Room to Read…
Category: experience
E-commerce in Nepal heats up
Sasto Deal. Daraz Nepal. UG Bazaar. Muncha. Now eSewaPasal. There’s more ecommerce companies in Nepal and I’ve only mentioned the ones that I regularly hear of. It’s exciting to witness the growth of ecommerce in Nepal in the last 5-7 years. Alibaba Group acquired the entire share capital of Daraz, the Pakistan-based e-commerce company that…
Comedy Circle’s Samay
The lights are on. Cameras are pointed to the stage. The audience is eagerly waiting to hear the jokes. At the end of this Thursday night at Samay Restaurant and Bar, the audience would have laughed hysterically to the 10+ stand up comedians that take the stage. I can say that this is Comedy Circle’s…
Internal leadership
Each company has a culture. Some cultures are lead by senior management, others lead by the employees and some lead equally by the management and employees. In any company, I believe there are a few people who aspire to lead, want to do new things and make a bigger impact in the company/society. Some company…
The gift of words
Words are powerful. When used at the right moment with the right person, the right words can move mountains. Words come so easy to us that perhaps we use it so casually that sometimes we don’t realize its full impact on the person we’re speaking to. As machines become better than us in doing most…
Soft skills matter
Soft skills matter more than ever. In this age of automation, machines are becoming more efficient doing the mundane tasks. We are then left to handle the ever more important human part. In the 2018 Workplace Learning Report published by LinkedIn, it mentioned that the #1 priority for talent development in 2018 is training for…
Boosting the striatum
“It’s nice to be important but it’s more important to be nice.” What a beautiful quote. Being nice is the gift we all can give to someone. It’s not expensive to be nice to people; in fact it takes more work to be an asshole. We all have enough to give, no one has more…
Lifelong student
Things change. Technology is speeding up the change. We are all students in one form or another. Graduating from college or a university is not enough. The goal now more than ever is to be a lifelong student. The drive to be better than yesterday has to be there every single day. The competition is…
What’s next?
What’s your next goal? What are you most excited about in your next adventure? What’s your next challenge? What’s the next thing that’s keeping you going everyday? Have you found your next thrill?
MakerBot in Ocean’s 8
It was summer 2010. I was in Brooklyn. That summer I spent time writing blogs and participating in exhibitions to get our company, MakerBot’s flagship product, 3D printer into the hands of consumers. That was one of my most exciting summers as I saw a worldwide movement take place. The desktop 3D printing revolution was…
Make an impact
Your next role should be chosen based on how much impact you will make. You must. We need more people aspiring to do the work where they can make the most impact. That’s the right thing to do. Being in a role where you are not making a difference or contributing to something bigger can…
Ahead of the kiosks
McDonald’s is planning to add self-order kiosks to 1,000 stores each quarter.That means you”ll be most likely ordering your next happy meal from kiosks rather than placing the order with a McDonald’s employee. The benefits of self-order kiosks for customers are touted as faster service, more choices, more efficient and so forth. The unspoken truth…
Skills blog series: Language skills
Welcome to the Skills blog series- Language skills The most widely spoken languages in the world are Chinese, Spanish, English, Hindi and Arabic respectively. If you are a native speaker in any of the languages above, that is great. If not, then knowing one or two of them would be the way to go. Being…
Starting a movement
Starting a movement means being the shirtless guy dancing all by himself when most of the crowd is sitting down. Well not just him but his first follower is equally or even more important. Derek Sivers in his Ted Talk says that the leader needs to have the guts to stand out and be ridiculed….
Investment in Nepal’s tech scene
It was 2012. I was feeling that something was brewing in Kathmandu, Nepal. There was a new wave of enthusiasm, drive and hunger to start something-among the youth. Events were happening almost every weekend. There was Startup Weekend Kathmandu, PIVOT Nepal, hackathons to name a few. The journey from 2012 to now has been long…
Well-being teams, social media & us
Within Instagram, there is a “well-being team” that’s just focused on fighting harassment and bullying as stated by co-founder and CTO of Instagram, Mike Krieger in The Players’ Tribune interview with Harrison Barnes. According to Statista, in 2017, 81 percent of the population in the United States had a social networking profile, representing a three…
Be a humble narcissistic leader
In a research of American and Chinese companies, it was shown that humble leaders are significantly more effective than narcissistic leaders with their employees more productive and more innovative. Leaders need to have the confidence to drive their team forward and also be grounded to the reality of things. Adam Grant points out that it…
Skills blog series
What has helped me tremendously in my personal and professional life is developing and having the right skills to adapt to different environments. I was born in Kathmandu (Nepal) and have lived in Cairo (Egypt), New York City (US) and Amsterdam (The Netherlands). What has worked for me is having skills that are transferable, adaptive…
Seven Bucks
He had seven bucks in his pocket when he was cut from Calgary Stampeders, Canadian Football League. Thus, Dwayne Johnson “The Rock” named his production company, his advertising agency among others: 7 bucks. He keeps the hard times in front of his mind which helps him to go into these big moments with a different…
Will you take 10 minutes to change your life?
Will Smith did. He took 10 mins and did an impromptu audition at Quincy Jones’s party for the guests. Will could have waited a week or maybe even 3 weeks to prepare. However, Quincy was adamant that Will audition at the moment and not wait any longer. Well he didn’t and after that audition, Will…