[Business] Away from the MBA madness

I spent the 1st half of this week in Dallas, attending a conference on 'IMS'. Spending 3 days in total non MBA app mode was exactly what the doctor and I_will_make_it had ordered.

In case you are wondering, 'IMS' is one of those silver bullets which the tech industry gets excited about from time to time. For geeks here is more information. For non-geeks and lazy bums, IMS is an architecture which is supposed to bring about convergence. What will get converged is an open question and there are a variety of views on this. The three most promising candidates in my opinion are :

Wireless-Wireline - you can start a call using your landline connection, continue it in your car using your cellular connection and terminate it over the wi-fi connection at your local drug dealer.

Internet-Telecom - it will become as easy (really?) to develop and deploy applications on the telecom network as it is today on the internet. So next time you hang up after telling your best friend how depressed you are feeling you'll get a SMS with a 'buy one get one free' offer from Zoloft. (think ads and gmail)

Tea-Coffee - you can make tea and coffee on the same machine. Just kidding - sort of.

My entirely ignorant, high level take on IMS is that like all new technologies it will fall well short of the hype in the short term but will change our lives for better or for worse in the long term.

On a personal note, most of the people at that conference were VP/Director/CXO types. Once when I was in class 4 (elementary school) in India, I had by mistake wandered into the high school part of the building. On the 1st day of this conference I felt as I had felt on that day long ago. But then I realized that my name-tag didn't carry my designation. So I spent the rest of the time doing my best impersonation of the quiet, deep, exceedingly brilliant yet humble genius. Was I able to pull it off? Don't know, but atleast I didn't get thrown out!! That should count for something.