Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering Informatica World 2018. Brought to you by Informatica. Hello everyone, welcome back. This is theCUBE's exclusive coverage at Informatica World 2018 here. Live in Las Vegas at the Venetian Ballroom, I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE with Peter Burris, my co-host this week, analyst at Wikibon, chief analyst at SiliconANGLE on theCUBE. Our next guest is Sanjivora, Group Technology Officer at Centure, in charge of incubating new business, growing new businesses, handling the talent. Great to have you on. Thanks for spending the time coming on. Pleasure, it's my pleasure to be here. So we have a lot of the Centure interviews go to thecube.net type in a Centure, you'll see all the experts. And one of the things we love about talking with a Centure is you guys are in the front lines of all the action. You have all the customer deployments, global system integrator, but you've got to be on top of the new technology and you get really smart people. So thanks for spending the time. So I got to ask you, looking at the landscape of the timing of Informatica's opportunity, you got data, which is not a surprise for some people, but you got GDPR happening on this Friday. You got cloud scale on the horizon. A lot of interesting things are going on right now around data and the impact of customers, which is now pretty much front and center. What are you guys doing with Informatica? What are some of the things that you guys are engaging with them on? And what's important to you? Look, we have a very deep relationship with Informatica for many years and we have many, many joint clients in the market and we are helping them sustain their businesses and also grow their businesses future, right? In future. And I think, and there's a lot going on, there's a lot going on sustaining the core of the business and improving it on a continuous basis by using new technologies and, you know, like today's keynote when Anil talked about the new stuff. I mean, there's a lot of things actually clients require or our customers require for just sustaining their core. But then I call something in the new, which is basically how you're building your new business models, how you're disrupting the market in your industry, what's new around that. And in that piece, I think that's where we are now started working with Informatica to see what are the pieces we need to bring together to the market so we can generate, so that we can help clients or customers to, customers to really leverage the power of technology. And I'll tell you, there are four areas of discussion broadly so that, you know, you get a sense and we can deep dive depending on what you want to see, right? The first one is I think the customers have now data warehouses, which are data 2.0 as it was sold in the morning. So there's still a 15 years old data warehouses, they're not in the new. So a lot of customers and a lot of organizations, large organizations, including some of organizations like ours, they're investing right now to make sure that they get to data 3.0, which is what Amit was saying in the morning, which is around the new data supply chain. Because without that, you cannot actually get real-time analytics, right? So you can't generate insights analytics unless you actually work on your data's infrastructure layer below. So that's one area where we are working with them. That's where the cloud comes in. That's where the flexibility of cloud comes in there. The second piece is around data compliance and governance because, guess what? I mean, there are regulations which are coming up now which are towards data privacy and data protection. And the data infrastructures which were built 15 years back actually do not handle that so effectively, right? And being polite. But yeah, I mean, it wasn't built for it, it was didn't have to think about it. It was built for that, exactly. So now, the point here is that now there is a regulation coming in. One of them is GDPR, Global Data Protection Regulation. It impacts all the global companies who deal with EU residents. And now they are looking at how they can address that regulation and be compliant with that regulation. And we believe there's a great opportunity for them to actually invest and see how not only comply with regulation but actually make this a benefit for them and make the next leap towards building a next level of infrastructure for them and data, right? And that is doing a lot of the data engineering, actually getting data right. And that's the third piece. So the first two are this. So one is infrastructure, second is compliance. And the third piece, and by the way, they're all interrelated finally, but I'm just saying it depends on from where do you want to begin your journey, right? And the third piece is around, I think you got it right, it's about quality of data. But actually it is not quality, we call it data veracity. It's much beyond quality. We talk about more completeness and also things like provenance, integrity and security along with it. So if we, and it's very much business context relevant because what's happening is you may have heard the stories that clients have invested in data lakes for years now. It's been there for like eight, nine years, data lake concepts and everybody talks about it. Throw everything into the lake. And everybody says throw into the lake and then become data swamp. That was last year's theme. That was last year's theme. And the reason is because it's not at IT's failure. IT actually is pretty advanced. The technology is very advanced. It's that business is not as involved as it should be and is not able to trust the data. And that's where your point comes in, whether you have the right data and trust the data with you. So we had Toyota on earlier and they said, one of the customers said, we had this 2008 post crisis thing and then they had all the stuff channel and they had product on the channel and they had the data. They actually had the data. They didn't have access to it. So again, this is like the new data center, you know, data first get it right. And so with GDPR we're seeing people saying, okay, we got to get this right. So that's engineering involved, governance, application integration. This is all now a new thing. How do you guys advise your clients? Because this is super important and you guys are on again, on the front edge. As a CTO group, you got to look at the new tech and say, okay, that's baked, that's not baked, that's new, that's old, throw container around it. You know, how are you sorting through the tools, the platforms, there's a lot of stuff out there. Oh yes, absolutely. And there's a lot of stuff and there's a lot of unproven things as well in the market. So the first and foremost thing is that we should understand what the context in the market right now. The first question is, is everybody ready for GDPR? The answer is no. Are they, have they started into the journey to get, have they started getting into race track, right, on the road? Yes, yeah, it depends on maturity of that organization. Some people have just started building a small strategy around GDPR. Some people have actually started doing assessment to understand how complex is this beast and regulation. And some people have just moved further in the journey of doing assessment, but they're now putting up changes in their infrastructure to handle remediation, right? Things like for example, concern management, things about things like deletion, like it's could be a very big deal to do, right? And so they are making changes to the infrastructure that they have or the IT systems to manage it effectively. But I don't think there's any company which probably can claim that they have got it right fully end to end, right? So I think that's happening. Now how are we addressing, I think the first and foremost thing, first of all we need to assess the maturity of the customer or the organization. Like we actually talk to them first and understand where they stand, right? Usually we have various ways of doing it. We can have a chit chat and meet the personal responsibility in that company. It could be a chief data officer of a company. It could be a CIO of a company. It could be a chief operating officer of a company. It could be a CISO of a company, depending on who has a baton in the C-suite to kind of handle this properly. So it's different for company, right? So every company has their own hierarchy or need or entry point. There are companies have different entry points, but we are seeing more of the CISOs and CIOs playing a role in many of the large organizations. And our clientele is very large companies, as you know. But we see most of these players playing that role and asking for help and asking for having a meeting, starting with that. In some cases where they have not invested initially, we talk to them, we assess them very quickly. Very easy, quick assessment, probably in a couple of days a day, and tell them let's get into what we call as, we have something called as assessment as step one. And that takes four to six weeks or eight weeks, depending on the size of their application suite and the organization. And we do it quite fast. I mean, initially we were also learning. Like if you had asked me the question of 12 months back, we had an approach. We have changed approach and evolved that approach now. We invested hugely in that approach itself by using a lot of machine learning to do assessment itself. So we have now a concept called data discovery. Another concept called knowledge graph. I mean, that's software driven with either machine learning or largely computer driven, with human, obviously human and computer, both together. But it's not only human. Traditional approach would have been to do only with humans. Yeah, I've been thinking a long time. And that's a change. That has changed with the new era and technology advancement that even for things which are like assessment, could now be done by machines as well. Machines are smarter enough to do that work. So we are using that right now. But that's a step one. And after that, once we get there, we build a roadmap for them. We ensure that their stakeholders are agreeing with the roadmap. They actually, you know, embrace the roadmap. And once that's done, then we talk about remediation to their systems. So you mentioned veracity. One of the, and you also mentioned, for example, the idea of the, because of GDPR, deletion. Which itself is a veracity thing. So it's also having verifiable actions on data. So the challenge that you face, I think when you talk to large customers, and John mentioned the Toyota, is the data's there, but sometimes it's not organized for new classes of problems. So that's an executive issue. Because a lot of executives don't think in terms of new problem, new data, new organization. You guys are speaking to the top executives, CISOs, CIOs often. But how are you encouraging your clients, your customers, to think differently so that they become data-first, which is kind of a predicate for digital business transformation anyway? So I think it's a great question. I think it depends again on whom you're talking to in the organization. I have a very strong perspective, my personal view is that data is an intersection of business and technology. It is not a technology, it's not a business. It's an intersection of both, especially this topic. It has to be done in collaboration between business and technology, very closely in terms of how you can drive merit out of your data, how you can drive advantage out of your data. And having said that, I think the important thing to note down is that for every, when you talk about data veracity, the single comment I will make that is very, very, very contextual to business. Data veracity is very, very contextual to business that you're running. Well, but problems, right? Because for example, Toyota, so when the Toyota gentleman came on, and this is really important, the manufacturing people were doing a great job of using data. Lean is very data-driven. The marketing people were doing a great job of using data. The sales people were doing a great job of using data. The problem was the problems that Toyota faced in 2008 when the credit crunch hit were not limited, they were not manufacturing problems, marketing problems, sales problems. They were a holistic set of problems. And he discovered, Toyota discovered, they needed to say, what's the problem? Recast the problem? And what can we do to get the data necessary to answer some of these crucial questions that we have? I think you hit the nail. I can tell, I mean, I think you're spot on. And the one way we are doing right now and noticing that is through what we call is our liquid studios. I'm just giving liquid studios. Liquid studios. Liquid studios. And I tell you this concept, I started, I don't know if you've heard about this from extension before. It's a great story. We started this thing a couple of years ago. Take a minute to explain this. To explain this. Take a minute to explain that. It's important. Explain liquid studios. Okay. So liquid studios. So when we were thinking about these things where we were talking to multiple clients stakeholders, exactly the point. They may be working in silos and they may be doing a great job in their department or their function. But they're not talking across enterprise. As to how they can, if you are doing great work, can I use your work for my advantage and vice versa, right? Because it's all sharing data. Even inside enterprise, forget about outside enterprise, right? And you will be amazed to know how much sharing happens today within the enterprise, right? And you're smiling, right? So what we did was we came to this concept and technologies are very new and very advanced and many of the technologies we are not using beyond experimentation. We are still in the COE concept. Well, that's different than enterprise-wide deployment. Like if you talk about ERP today, that's not a COE, that's an enterprise-wide deployment in most of the companies. It's all there. Like you run your finance on ERPs, right? Most of the companies, big companies. So we felt that technology is advancing. The business and CIOS, they all have to still agree on a concept and define a problem together. And that's where the studio comes in. So what we do is it's actually an extension facility, very innovative and creative space. It's unlike an office. It's very much like new, new thing. It's like very differently organized, structured to generate creativity and good discussion. And we bring in customers there. We have a workshop with them. We talk about the problem for one or two days. We use design thinking for that, very effectively. Because one thing with design thinking brings on table is agreement on a problem. In a very nice manner, without confronting. In a very subtle manner. So in two days time frame, you get to a good problem situation, good problem definition, and then the studio can actually help you do the POC itself. Because many times people say, well, I understand the problem. I think I kind of get your solution of what you're proposing. My people also tell me something else. They have a different option to propose. Can we do it together? Can I get a confidence that I don't want to go and enterprise wine deployment and put my money unless I see some proof of pudding? But proof of pudding is not a PowerPoint. It's an actual working mark. It's not? It's not. And that's where the studio comes in picture. Because you won't believe that we do this two days of workshop without any PowerPoint, like without any single slide. So it's creative, it's very agile, very... It's all whiteboarding, come and talk. It's more facilitation, more facilitation now. More human interaction. And that's why you open up everybody saying, what is the overview? What is the overview? We use a lot of post-it stickies to kind of get there. I think the business angle is super important. I want to get your thoughts, because there's a lot of problems that can be solved once you identify them. But we're hearing terms like competitive advantage. Because when you solve some of these problems, these holistic problems that have a lot of interplay, where data sharing, whether it's internal and or external with APIs or cloud native, you start thinking about competitive advantages, being a data first company. We've heard these terms. What does that mean to you guys when you walk into an executive briefing and they say, look, we've done all this work, we've done this engineering, here's where we're at, we need help, but ultimately we want to drive top-line results, be more competitive, and really kind of move with the shift. This is more of a business discussion. What do you guys talk about when you have those conversations? I think we... So first of all, data was always a technical topic. Do you agree, like if you just go back 10 years back, data was always a CIO discussion? Well, unless you're in a regulated industry, like financial services or... Or I guess I'd say this, that the notion of getting data out of a system or getting data into a system was a technical discussion. But there was, we've always used data from market share growth, et cetera, but that was relatively simple, straightforward data. And what you're talking about, I think, is getting into considerably greater detail about how the business is really operating, and how the business is really working, am I right? You're right, considering data as an asset and a discussion in terms of how you can, how can you leverage it effectively? That's what I was saying, and so it has definitely got a one more level upstature in the discussion, in the companies and organization. And what we're saying is that's where the business comes in effectively and say that, help me understand.  Schema, is this data thing? And it's very hard for a business guy to understand that. Like if I'm a supply chain lead, I don't get it, it's too complex for me. So what we did, I'm just letting you know how we start the discussion. The first and foremost thing is we tell them, we're going to solve the business problem to your point. That's what we think, right? And every company nowadays, they want to lead in their industry. And the leadership position is to be more intelligent. Yeah, and they got it, and it's got to hit the mark. I mean, we had Graham Thompson as the CIO here at Informatica, and he was saying that you go to a CFO and ask them, hey, where's the money? They'll go, oh, it's over here. And they get this out. They know where it's stored at risk management. They say, where's the data? You mentioned asset. This is now becoming a conversation where it's like, certainly GDPR is one shot across the bow that people are standing up and taking notice is happening now. This data as an asset is a very interesting concept. When I'm a customer of yours, I say, hey, censure. I have a need. I got to move my organization to be data first, but I got to do some more work. What's my journey? I know it's different for customers. I mean, where it's top down or bottom up, we see that a lot, but how do you guys take them through the journey? Is it the workshop, as you mentioned in the assessment? Take us through the journey of how you help customers because I'm sure a lot of them are sitting out there going now, they're going to be exposed with GDPR. It's like, wow, are we really set up for this? So I think in the journey, it's a very good question that you ask. The journey can start depending on the biggest pain they have. And the pains could be different on the maturity of that particular organization, right? But I can tell you where we are. I can tell you what client conversation we are having in a very simplified manner. So they do understand the journey. But yes, when we engage with them, there's a process we follow. We have a discovery process. We have a studio process to kind of have a workshop, get into a POC, get into a large-scale deployment solution. That's a simple thing. That's a more sequential in nature. But the condition is around four areas. The first and foremost area is many companies actually don't have very well-articulated data strategy. They have a very well-articulated IT strategy. And when you go to a section in IT strategy, there's a data component in that, but that's all technology, about how do you load, how do you extract those things. It talks about data architectures and it talks about data integration, but it doesn't talk about data as a business, right? That's where it's not there, right? In some companies, they do have, to your point, yes, some companies are always there in data because of regulatory concerns and requirements, so they always had an organization or function which taught data differently than other industries. And those industries have more better strategy document or more organized in that space. But guess what? Now companies are actually investing. They're actually asking for doing help in data strategies. That's one entry point which happens, which means, hey, I understand this, I understand governance is required, I understand privacy is required, I understand this is required, I also understand that I need to move to new infrastructure, but guess, I can't just make investment in one or two areas, can you help me build my strategy and roadmap as to what should be my journey from now till next three years, right? How does it look like? How much money is required? How much investment is required? How do I save from somewhere and invest here? Tell me, save to innovate, right? That's a new concept, right? Because I don't have so much that you're asking for, so help me gain some savings somewhere else. That's where cloud comes in. You know, make sure. So that's one entry point. The second entry point is totally on where the customers are very clear, they actually have thought through the process in terms of what they want to go. They actually are asking very specifically saying, my, I do have a problem, no infrastructure. Help me move to cloud. Help me, that's a big discussion right now. Help me move to cloud, right? That's one which I call as new data supply chain. That's my language, which means that- I like that word actually. Yeah? I'm making your supply chain, my supply chain in business term, I have to explain business, it's different. Technical, it's different. Technology, I can explain all the things that you just mentioned. In business, I explained that there are three C's of supply chain, capture it, curate it, consume it. And they say, oh, I get it now. The data supply chain is interesting too when you think about new data coming in, the system has to be reactive and handle new data. So you have to have this catalog thing. And that was something that we saw a lot of buzz here at the show, this enterprise catalog. What's your take on that? What's your assessment of the catalog, impact to customers, purpose at this point in time? I think it's very important, especially for the customers and large companies who actually have data all over the place. I can share some examples. We were talking to one of the customers who had 2600 applications and they want to go for GDPR. We had a chat with them and we said, look, they were more comfortable saying, no, no, let's not use any machine. Because when you talk about machine, then you have to expose yourself a bit, right? And I said, look, the machine is not going to be in my place, it's going to be in your boundaries of firewall. But they were a little more concerned. They said, let's go with the manual approach. Let's do that. It's your call. We can do that as well. But guess what? 2600 applications, you can't discover manually. It just not possible. You need help. A lot of data is streaming in. I guess I'm just answering your question. The data catalog is extremely important. If you really want to get a sense of where the data is residing because data is not in one or two applications all over the place. Well, I'm impressed by the data catalog's positioning. But then also when I look at the Azure announcement they had, Informatica had, you're essentially seeing hybrid cloud playing out its real product. And so that's an easy migration to bring in some of those BI tools, bring in some democratization into the data discovery. Rajiv, thanks for coming on theCUBE. Really appreciate it. Love the work you're doing. I want you to take a minute just to end the segment out to explain the work that you do. You have two roles. Real quick, explain your two primary roles. You've got the incubate new stuff which is hard to do, but entrepreneur love the hard problems, but also you're doing talent. Take a minute to explain real quickly those two roles, super important. Okay, the first one is basically that in my role I look at any ideas that we can incubate as a business and we can work with an extension, different entities with an extension to make sure that we go to clients in a much more cohesive manner and see how we can have an impact to our top line. And that's a big thing because we are in services business and we have to be very innovative to come to know how do we increase or increase our business. Any examples that you can share that stuff that you worked on? So one is right now I'm spending a lot of my time in on fueling our data business itself. We just recently launched our data business group, right? We have our market going in the positions is called as applied intelligence, which you may be aware, which includes data analytics, advanced analytics, and then artificial intelligence all put together when we can solve. And you guys got a zillion data scientists. I know that you guys have been hiring high really really strong. It's a very strong team, but what I feel is that the data is a critical foundation, really critical foundation for intelligent enterprise. You can't become an intelligent enterprise unless you have right data to your point. And right data means curated data in the set and fashion that can help you become draw more insights from your enterprise. And that's possible if you invest in data strongly in supply chain of data strongly. So that's why we are fueling that. So I'm just letting you know that I spending most of my time right now to enhance our capability, enhance our power and on that and go to market with that. The second thing which I'm investing right now, which is there are a few more ideas, but one more which could be very useful for you to know is while companies are moving to the new, they have to also, they have to rely on their people. Ultimately, the companies are made of people like us. And if you are not retooling yourself, you cannot reimagine the future of your organization as well. And so the people's their own skills, their job functions. So I'm working on a concept called workforce of the future. How can, only for large companies, large companies, how can they transform their talent and their even leadership as well so that they're ready for the future and they can be more relevant. And this is the argument we always see in theCUBE. Oh, automation is going to take jobs away. Well, I mean, certainly automating repetitive tasks. No one wants to do those, but the value is going to shift. That's where the opportunities are. Is that somehow you see that future workforce? Absolutely, it's going to be complimentary. We have Paul Daughty, whom you know was the Chief Technology Officer of Accenture Technology, Accenture, Accenture as a firm. He's a Chief Technology and Innovation Officer for Accenture. He has recently written a book called Human Plus Machine. Exactly talk about the same concept that we actually all of us believe very strongly that the future is all about augmenting humans together. So their task, which machine should be doing and their task, which human should be doing and the task, which both of them do collaboratively. And that's what we are trying to do. Collabor, we're doing it here in theCUBE, here at Informatica World. Rajeev, thanks so much for spending your time. Sajeev, thanks for coming on. Sajeev, thanks for coming on. Sorry, my bad, a little late in the day, but we're bringing it out here at Informatica World. This is theCUBE. I'm John Furrier with Peter Burris, here with Accenture inside theCUBE here at Informatica World in Las Vegas. Be right back with more coverage after this short break. Thank you.


Good morning to everyone. My name is Sahana Murthy. I am a faculty member in the interdisciplinary program in educational technology at IIT Bombay. It is a relatively new department. We started about five years ago and it is a department where we do two things. One is the people who it is interdisciplinary. So, we have people from engineering, computer science, basic sciences as well as people from a social science background. Primarily education and psychology. We develop technology tools like tutoring systems or virtual world simulations and all for the purpose of teaching and learning in various domains. And also develop pedagogical methods, instructional strategies and student centric active learning techniques to be used along with these technology tools. Right now, we only have a PhD program. I should have put the URL of a department, but maybe later. So, before we start with the core part of today's talk, this session. There is a little bit I would like to know about you and maybe you have been answering this in all the sessions, but I was in presence. So, just bear with me. I just want to know the distribution of your background. So, you can just raise your hand 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. So, are you from an engineering, basic science, humanities, social science or some other background? Yeah, just pointing your fingers. Whether your choice is 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5. I do not want exact numbers. I just want a rough distribution. I want to see who is sitting next to whom, whether it is mixed. Okay, just keep it there for a minute. 1, 3, 4. Alright. Fine. See, for example, let me tell you what all I got from this very quick exercise. I got that there is a fair distribution, not exactly equal, but a fair representation in all the first four categories. Actually, I had a slight idea because Professor Sundar had told us a couple of days ago who all are here. And one of our PhD students, she knew people from her college who are coming here. And she said that there are people who teach business communication and who are from the humanities and social sciences. And I would not have known before that. So, a quick exercise like this gives an idea of who is there in the class. A couple of more like this. They may have smaller. So, yeah, this is a course for coordinators. We know that. But do you plan to teach? Are you teaching or do you plan to teach? Yes. How many knows? Okay, there are a few people who don't teach also. But there are people in your college who will teach this course. And you will go to them with the takeaways from this session. Okay. Last question. In your professional work, do you need to talk about your research? Just say, yes, I want to see how many? One, two, three. Yes, one. No, no, one, two, three. One is, you have to talk about research often. Two is sometimes, three is not at all. Two, two, two, two, one, two, three. There are some threes. Okay, great. Thanks. So it looks like mostly ones and twos. And the reason, again, I'd like to know all of this is this is a really odd course in some sense. You know, it's about technical communication. So who are you going to teach? Most likely engineering students. Who are we teaching? It's teachers who will teach engineering students, but they're from a different background. It may also be useful for your own research. So knowing the context is a little useful here. Okay, so let's look at two scenarios. And it's good if you have some paper and pencil in front of you right now. So this session is going to be useful. I just said this. If you teach a plan to teach a communications course or if you found that you have to talk about your research. So if you're in one or both categories, it will be useful for you. And hopefully people will belong to one of these. The other place where it will be useful is if you need to mentor students for their careers. So, you know, some student might come to you and say, I'm appearing for a job interview tomorrow. Or you may have to coach students through some projects for their future careers. So this session, in fact, this entire workshop will be useful for you even from that perspective. And in our role as teachers, I think all of us sometime or the other have to do fall into this category. Okay, so here is a scenario. So consider that your student now, your student is appearing for a job interview. And a typical question that the interviewer asks the student is tell me about yourself. It's a very standard opening statement in an interview. And usually the students have one minute to answer. So just jot down a few points that you would advise your students to say. Jot it down and keep it with you. We won't do much about it right now. Okay, if you're done with that, a very similar scenario. And we'll be taking what you wrote and refining it and over the course of the session. So imagine now you're in the other role. You are attending a research conference and you have to talk about your poster. Maybe you're giving a presentation or there is a poster and you have to talk about your research. Or you meet a senior colleague who says, so what are you working on? It's a dreaded question of all researchers because you have to, it's also a very powerful and excellent question. But you have one minute to give a coherent response. And before the one minute is up, the senior member will go get chai and will lose interest. Okay, so what will you say at that point? So assume the senior member is in your broad field but you don't exactly know who he or she is. Now they may not be in your subspeciality but it's a broad research conference in your field. Again, two to three sentences, 50 to 100 words, no more. So it's not very easy. Okay, so if you have a few points here, what you all just did in either the first or the second scenario was create what's called the elevator pitch. Okay, so the answer to any of the such questions, tell me about yourself. What are you working on? Let's introduce ourselves. You may be at some professional social meeting, maybe you're sitting around a table during some business lunch. Or what's your research about? Or for your students a more formal situation where they're interviewing. Such questions will be asked. Your students and you have to be prepared with such answers. So why is this called an elevator pitch and what does it really mean? Let's look at this. So this is one formal definition I believe it's from Wikipedia. It's a short summary and it's used to define either a person or a product or an organization, an event along with its value proposition. So we'll come back to what's meant by a value proposition. It's called an elevator pitch because it's a little light hearted there. You meet somebody in an elevator on the ground floor and by the time the elevator reaches the top floor you should be able to deliver your pitch. And that span is 30 seconds usually. Sometimes very rarely if you're in, you know, some towers in South Bombay it may be 2 minutes, but 2 minutes is also a bit too much there. Okay, little more about this. So to create an elevator pitch, I think this is something we already discussed. If you have to present your research at a conference, if your students are going for a job interview, any of you are enrolled for a PhD? Few of you are. So as PhD research scholars it's very important to develop this pitch. Because as PhD research scholars you often have to talk about this in various settings. And obviously many times you have to talk an hour about this, sometimes half an hour. But you will find several opportunities and several places where you have to be able to say my PhD is about. And there goes your elevator pitch. And the introducing yourself and so on. So especially for PhD students and even otherwise just go take a look at this. I've just put a screenshot here. There are several contests for PhD students called two-minute thesis or three-minute thesis where they're supposed to either talk about or create a video or some presentation on their PhD in three minutes. It's a lot of fun and you get to learn about a number of fields in this manner. There is a whole culture. It's called PhD comics. You may have seen it, some of you. So the PhD comic strip also, that group also had advertised for an elevator pitch. And I believe in IIT Bombay last year the research scholars forum was planning to do it. Did it happen? Not yet. So why should you care to make this elevator pitch? The main point is you have only one chance to make a good first impression. And what is meant by a value proposition that was there on an earlier slide is that you have to sum up what is so unique about yourself and your work. You have to make the other person care about your work. You have to excite the other person. And clearly this is one of the key communication skills. That in a short time how do you say something that, so it began in mostly in the business world where people had to sell an idea or a product. So initially in the academic world people were saying things like, oh well you know these are things that's done in industry and in the business world. But the moment you think about the research you have to always be able to sell your research. And by sell I mean you have to get other people excited about your research. Including the lay public because we are using taxpayer money to do our research. So it has importance, it has value in both industry settings as well as academic settings. And your students are going to go into both places. So I'm going to skip over this. So let's do an activity at this point. So I'm going to show text here. Later we'll do some videos. I'm going to show text of two elevator pitches. One example on the left and one on the right. And I'd like you to first again do a voting after you read it on which you think is better. In whatever way you define better. And this time instead of giving out your answers one, two and three here, one and both are equally good.  Because at one level I don't want anybody else to see your answers initially and then you can talk and so on. I'll tell you when to put up your hands. It will require a few minutes, maybe 30 seconds of reading. So is the activity here? Just read through it and judge what you think is better. Okay, ready to vote? Okay, one, two, three let's see your vote. The only thing here is you can't abstain. There's no right or wrong answer really for many of these questions. But you have to say something. So this entire row seems to be okay, now people are. Okay, so it looks like a large majority of you are saying two. I saw a few people saying three and I didn't see any one. One, some people said one. Okay, do one thing. Do two things here. Firstly, you can now start talking to your neighbor. And what I'd like you to do, and I'm going to write this down, is why you think whatever you saw one or two, whichever you thought was better, why do you think that's better? What were features in it that made it better? So talk to your neighbor. Firstly check if you and your neighbor had a different answer. There were very few places where I saw discrepancy between neighbors. If there's a discrepancy, resolve it. So let's look like there was some lively discussion here. Let me just hear what you're saying. You can just say one by one and wait till the mic comes to you. Say one point and then we'll give somebody else a chance and the mic might come back to you. So just say one point. Firstly, say which one you thought was better and one point as to why. Second one is better. And point is in first sentence, what is the expertise, what he learned in an expertise form. In second, he says that what he applied that particular knowledge in the college itself. And third one, he's ready to apply it. One by one, let's just pick one point. Your first point was this particular elevator pitch starts with the expertise of the students. So let's hear, why is it so important? What makes this good? Okay, they talk about their expertise. So what? It shows confidence. It's very precise. That's what somebody said. It's very precise and to the point that it's focused. So let's just write a few of these ones. So this is focused. So a good elevator pitch is focused. It is precise. What about the impression? In the very first sentence, the key unique point that this person wanted to apply. Project is a much better word than sell. I was going to say sell, but wanted to project about themselves is there. Okay, so good. Ma'am. According to me, the sequence of information is also important. According to me, second example is the better one. Because in first example, the way he started, he or she started is like graduated from this college. So somebody always graduates from some or the other college. So I'm going to say a couple of more words about this. Everybody has graduated from some college or the other. So it's not something very unique or important. More importantly, this information is always there on the resume or CV of every job applicant. Okay, on the other hand, maybe at some point you want to just let's say the student graduated from some fancy college. And they want to throw it in without making a big deal about yourself. See how this person has slipped it in here. Okay. That they are saying that they're letting the interviewer know that I'm from this college, which information is there, but they're saying what they did there. Okay, let's focus a little bit on the parts of the bottom. Why is this important here? Achievement by the person. So what does so everybody has achievements? Okay, let's go. Okay, so there are two points you're making both are important. First, let's look at the last sentence. This is what the listener cares about because the student is telling the listener, this is what I can provide you. And the evidence that he or she can do it in the next few years is there in the previous sentence. Okay, good. I think this discussion brings out all the key features that are necessary in the elevator pitch. I have a summary slide here and let me just put this up. I think most of your points are here. If not, I'll add a few more. So a good elevator pitch. The vision is one point. The vision of what the person wants to do in the next coming months or years for the organization is clear. You can use the word vision. Usually when we think of vision, we think of something big and broad, but for a person, sure. I think that what I'm going to do, you actually, that is more important than that. That's the last paragraph that he's telling about. So he's having something else. The interior will expect something. Oh, he's going to do something for me. Okay, so taking, yeah. Why should we hire you or how do you fit in our company? These two are common questions. So now with this elevator pitch, it opens up. See, an elevator pitch actually should set the stage and set the tone for further conversation, further discussion. It's really to get the listener interested in what I'm doing. So with the second elevator pitch, the listener wants to ask more. Oh, okay, you've done this tool in Facebook. Tell me more about it. That's where the conversation is going to go. And the moment I'm asked about, tell me what you did for Facebook. I'm in my comfort zone because this is about my project. So I've steered the conversation into, about my strengths, but it's come there because the interviewer wants to know what I can do for them. Okay, so there are all these points. Yeah. Last line. Yes, so actually let's look at this one also. The last line here is very general as you mentioned. So which student does not want to do anything interesting? Okay. And if a student, so it is a good thing. We clearly are looking for, actually the point you make is that we are looking for somebody who wants to use his or her skills and who wants to move to an interesting platform. Definitely we are looking for such people. But saying that I want to use my skills is not going to give that impression. The next question will be, okay, what will you do with your skills? What do you mean by interesting? I don't know. Right. Somewhere, that's another point. Look at the difference between this sentence I've spent last three years in market research. What were you doing in that company? That's the question. You have experience, I agree, but in what? Whereas the second person has said something very similar through three years of market research experience, but specifically in research design modeling and so on. So this is really how to take most of us start from somewhere here because this is really what we want to say. But each sentence is being illustrated with specific examples which are unique to that person in the second example. So it's more of a show rather than telling. First person is saying I want to do something interesting. Second person is showing what is meant by interesting. Okay. One last comment then we'll move on. In the example too, marketing programs generally will not be prepared for non-profit organizations. Okay. So above points really giving is strength, but the second one if he is trying to talk to a job interviewer. So job interviewer, if it is only non-profit organization then it's... So I'm assuming that the company he or she is interviewing for is a non-profit organization, otherwise they wouldn't say that. But generally marketing programs will not be there. We might not, but see again, if a person with analytical marketing background goes to a non-profit organization and says I want to work there, this person is really unique. I mean this has to be valid, this has to be true, okay, to... Okay, one last comment from the back. Actually it's not a comment actually, it says a supplement. That when he is saying that marketing program for non-profit organization, that may include so many things like branding, promotion of the non-profit organizations, their works. So there they can add values. I mean I understood the previous comment that non-profit organizations also need marketing. They need to go get people to support them. Yeah, funding, they need to... To sustain themselves. Marketing is thought of broadly in that sense. It's not about selling any product, but about their image or what they do and so on. Okay, so let's look at these points and then I want you to look back at couple of more examples. So you know one way to do this is look at your own elevator pitches that you wrote in the first scenario. Have you? Just make a quick check about if you have all these points. If not, think about which point you may want to add related to this. Have you explained what you are doing and more importantly why? Do you have some unique thing in your pitch? What is the hook? It's not exactly a long list of criteria, it's sort of a loose checklist. See if you have some of these points. Later, maybe in the homework you can refine it. Does anybody want to share any new point they added? One new point, yes. Do not have enough time, so we should be more direct in answering, right? So I just want to bring to your notice one point. The two examples that you saw, they were almost the same length. World count, it was not exactly the same, the one on the left was 47 words and the one on the right was 51. So it was more but it was nearly the same. So it's not that when you say something but still the second one looked very dense. You got a lot more focused information. Okay, is there any point, any interesting point somebody added? You don't have to, just if you think you added some new point based on this, yeah. Ma'am, one difference of notice is in the two speeches, the second one is started from most recent one. And the people are basically, what recently you are doing, then telling about what you didn't learn before five years back? For the most part, yes. For the most part, okay. You're right, especially you don't want to go chronologically. This is important, we see this a lot with novice students, BTECs who come to interview and even people who come to our PhD program. So if we say, tell me about your background. They say, I went to kindergarten, I was a, you know, my father was in the army, so I went to school in this place.  So it's a good idea to caution students that that is not what people are looking for. And it goes, it ties to your point that it's not what happened 20 years ago or maybe even five years ago. The recent thing is more important. However, if there is something key that was done five years ago and as your experience grows, that might happen.  And when you were 30, you had a PhD. The job requires our PhD sort of important for the job. Even though it happened decade ago, it's an important thing it needs to come in. All right. Ma'am, I had just one point. One more point they can add is describing one personality using three adjectives. I have inducted a loyal and active like this. He has to describe his personality the last line in one way of writing this thing. So the suggestion here is use first, I'm going to add one more sentence to what you said. It's a good idea. Think of what describes you. Maybe you're industrious, maybe you're a loyal person, maybe you have a lot of energy. First, you have to think a lot, you have to reflect and see which adjective really describes you. But then come up with one example, maybe four words or a phrase that actually shows your loyalty. My friends think I'm loyal because I did this. I have been known to be highly energetic because in the college I did ABCDA, EFG. So illustrating the adjective that you want to describe about yourself through an example is more effective. Ma'am, I had just one point. Ma'am here. In the first example it looks like the student is in search of the job or the organization. But in the second it looks like organization is in search of this kind of person. So that goes back to the value proposition that the person can project and give to the organization. Actually both are true in both cases. The interviewer is also looking for a good person and the student is also looking for a job. Let me show you one more example. Let's not do any, now that we know what is a good elevator pitch we all agree. This has to do with research and especially if you are doing your PhD or if you are guiding students, mentoring students. It's quite useful. So just read the two and we'll do a short discussion here. So this is more detailed than the previous one. Both have details. So simply saying that the elevator pitch must have details is not sufficient because in some way in this one, the first one seems to be a little more detailed than the second one whereas in numbers and all are there. So the detail part by itself doesn't make or break a good elevator pitch. But what I want you to think about is who is the central actor in the first one and in the second one. The second one is easier. Who or what is the central actor? The PhD work and how the person has done the work. The first one is kind of going all over the place in some sense. So while it's important to give acknowledgement, it is very important to give acknowledgement to your guide, to your institute, to the technical RA who has helped. They are not the central people or central actors in the elevator pitch. So the first one, it almost seems like this person is telling her guide's story. Starts with this is what my guide is doing. My guide has this project. My institute has this facility and I'm working in it. It's a very typical thing for novice PhD students to have this mindset. But once the student starts taking ownership of her work, it becomes her work and even though she's working in a larger project with a guide, she could not have done this project without the technical RA's help. So there is due acknowledgement given there. But there are also irrelevant details here. I mean this technical RA went on to do ME. Who cares? Now the fact that she has a background in electrical engineering was important. So she wanted to say that I have a strong background in electrical engineering. Hence I can create teaching interventions for electrical engineering. But here it's being stated. Here that background, the importance of that background is being brought up. So it's not just, it's not a mere play on words. It's also why you want to give certain information. So when she wrote this at some point three or four years ago, I asked her, why are you telling me about this last sentence? Why should somebody care? She said, no, look, I want to tell people I have a doubly background and I come from a strong doubly background. Like, okay, let's put that in. Any other comments? One or two comments about this one? I showed you this because if you're in the research field as opposed to the other one, something like this may be useful. There are a lot of examples. If you look for elevator pitches for research or elevator pitches for engineering students, you'll find a lot of examples. I'll show you one or two later. Other comments, questions? Yes. Make a focus on, I have not completed my EE only or the degree of electrical engineering. It's time to say, I'm using my electrical engineering degree in application or bringing it in application for the use of the or for the betterment of the society. Yeah. So in comparison of first, it may be. Maybe five years later, her first sentence will change. She won't say I have a PhD because it's kind of, no, it's done. She'll talk more about her work. At this point, she needed, this was in a conference. She needed to tell, she was looking for some postdoc positions. She needed to tell people that I am doing my PhD. I'm about to finish my PhD and this is my work. So the PhD part, even though it's something that's there in her CV, it was important for her in the introduction. So another point here is that the elevator pitch evolves. It doesn't stay static. No, as the, it evolves in time and it also depends on the context. Okay. So let's do one example. Here is some students elevator pitch. I'll tell you what to do. So we'll do an activity called think fair share. The main goal is that you need to strengthen this elevator pitch, but we'll do it in phases. In the first phase individually, do you think this elevator point is elevator pitch is strong or weak? Write down one strong and one weak point. Okay, do this. I'll just put all the three phases and you can work on it. I would say about two minutes or so for this. Once you're done with this, pair with your neighbor. So the first two minutes work individually. A pair with your neighbor after that and come up with two ways to help you help the student. This is your student who's come to you. Help your student revise her pitch. And finally we'll do some full class discussion on the main change that we want to advise the student. So about two minutes for the first and five minutes for the second. As soon as you're done writing one strong and one weak point, pair up and start talking. See, this elevator pitch does have some strong points. Somebody asked her, what does it mean? It's not a terrible one. There are some things that the student has done well. So it's good to identify those and then also point out rooms to improve. So now you can start talking with each other. Okay, so let's see if you want to share. I'm sure you have come up with several things to advise your student. List them in some hierarchy, okay, in your mind or on your paper. What is the main thing? What is one interesting main thing? What and not just, oh, she should do this and not that. But try to give her some very specific feedback. So let's see what ideas you have. Okay, yes. Can we make it like this? I am a fourth year undergrad student in environmental science engineering. I did my primary project in the topic of water pollution chemicals. I'm looking for a position that will allow me to do research in your esteemed organization. Okay, let's... It is not needed to put the word use my combination skills. Okay, let's discuss this a little bit, okay. There are some, again, getting the student to say that there are some strong things and some weak things. So it's similar to what you are saying that's here except the last part, right? Last couple of sentences. Use my combination skills should not be there. Okay, so the first two sentences which you seem to have mentioned are similar to what's here. So do people agree that there is something okay, doesn't have to be terrible, but there's something okay about the first sentence.  Okay, so one change I'm hearing is that the student can shorten it. She's saying the same thing in too many words. So the content that's here can be shortened. The student can say this way. One second, one by one, let's see. I'm an expert in the water pollution and chemical as my final year project is on that. I'm looking for a place where I could prove myself. I'm going to steer the discussion in a slightly different direction. See, let's actually talk about the weak point here. What's the key weak point in this elevator pitch? He's asking from the companies to create an opportunity for his area actually. So he's not supposed to ask in this manner. What is the weak point? Instead like my focus area is this one and I can able to work in this particular this manner. There is a point that he's mentioning that here the student is not... The student seems to be very generic and open and is putting the owners on the company saying give me a job. You have to start. I'm looking for a position. Okay. He should not explain that I am a fourth year graduate. Okay, let's do one thing. Exact format. What should be the starting point? How should be the phrasing and all? Actually, some of it is a matter of personal choice. Let's talk a little bit more about the content in this, not just the style and the format. What is missing here? Yes, please. Madam, the repetition part is the negative part of this because the first two sentences and the last two sentences are saying almost the same thing. The strong point is that she has put forward that she wants to do further research. Okay. And I would suggest that she should be more concise and she should... This is just a way of doing it as my final year project for this environmental sciences and engineering. I'm going to talk about water pollution and chemicals. And there is a lot of scope for productive work in this project. And I'm looking forward for an organization that's going to let me work more on this as it has a lot of scope. Okay, so I'm going to make one suggestion here for you to continue. All these phrases, I'm looking for a position that allows... So try to be a little more specific, like in the examples that you saw earlier. And I'm going to show you one example. I'm not saying what is on the next slide is the best. And you can have quibbles with that. But look at the... It's more about saying things like, I want to use my skills or I want to work for your organization. I want to use my training. More than that, this is a little longer, I agree. But she's put in a lot more content here. There may be problems with this one also, other kinds of problems. But why is the second line, first line is the same? Why is the second line, I found it more interesting. Personally, me, why? I'm interested in it. Sundar is interested in it. I'm not sure about you. It talks about Pawai Lake and IITB, which we face, we see problems of it every single day. So the thing is this person has done some homework about the company. So we're kind of moving to the next stage. That's why I said the previous one is not terrible. But it's good to know what the company is really looking for.  I can fit well because my project was on that. That's one thing. One point which was missing in this one, but it was there in the earlier examples, was what specifically the person can do for the organization. So eventually she wants to develop something. So try to get your students to think about what they can take into it. Yes, everybody has great skills. Everybody is interesting. They work hard and all. But how can they translate that for themselves? So another way of saying it is, let's say you have two students. Both have graduated from the same university, same department. Their elevator pitches should look different. This one is too generic. Two students from that department, same year. Both of them will write something very similar. So try to make it the uniqueness aspect is what's missing here. Okay, let's move on a little bit. We can talk about this. Your next session, Dr. Leena Jha also will tell you a little more about how to present yourself in such situations. Like I'm a novice, I'm just a fresh person. And then because my project was related to say particular, I'm from electrical background. So I might be applying for a maintenance job. I might be a design job. So every time I have to develop a new elevator pitch or object. This is a very interesting question. So what the experts recommend here? The part about, let's look at this slide. Let's look at which parts here stay the same and which parts might change when you apply in different contexts. So explain what you do and why is it important. This is about yourself, your uniqueness, your selling point. It won't change drastically because in your 20 years or 40 years there are a few unique things you've done. So there are the parts which are core about yourself may stay the same. On the other hand, what do you want the listener to remember? What can you offer the listener? You're making a bridge between what you have and what they want or what you think they want at this stage. So that may need to change. Am I right? We will need to change them because simply because we are looking for a different respect. We need something more from life, we need something more out of work. And that is why we have to present a different elevator pitch whenever we apply. I think three to four years, five years down the lane, it should change. Not drastically as she said, not drastically. This month if I'm applying for four companies, even that would change. What I would say is that the perspective would change. The core content of what you have done will be the same. But the way, why is it important to the listener? That question you have to change. And now he's applying for a job in a company. And he's applying for a job as a faculty position. Very different. But what she said is, fourth year student applying one for a design job, one for a maintenance job, even there. So that means elevator pitch may change according to the... Good question. So let's, if you have to now come up with some heuristic guidelines. These are loose guidelines about how to create it or how to help your students create it. So the first point is exactly related to your question. Decide what's the purpose of the elevator pitch? Is it to introduce your research? Is it a job interview? Is it to start your own startup consultancy and so on? Once you've decided, you have to, this is hard.  What's your selling point? And give you one or two examples later. This has to be something... In this example, I think the engaging hope was... I analyzed how chemicals relate to the growth of water hyacinth. Because it's such a big problem here. We all care about a DP and somebody says, Oh, I've solved it or I've worked on it. That's the hope. This is practical but important. Write it. 50 to 200 is the range I've seen. 100 is somewhere in the middle. 3 to 4 sentences.  The more you practice, you'll just get confident. That's the main reason. Again, this time limit is about a minute and this is about a hundred words. So you try to balance those two. This one.  Device multi-resolution elevator pitch. So look at this cartoon here. If you can't read it, it says, I've got an elevator pitch, an escalator pitch, and just to be safe, a stairway pitch. What's different in the three? Length, time. So it's good to have a 30-second two-sentence statement. It's good to have a three-minute statement. As a PhD student, you also need a 15-minute talk and a one-hour talk. So it's good to have it, but it'll gradually develop. I mean, when you're advising your students, let them start with one good one and then you make them practice in different situations how it works. For research here are just some tips. I'm just going to state them. You can use them. This is specifically if you're talking about research most science and engineering research are abstract and esoteric and if you're telling, it should be something that if you meet your aunt or grandmother, they should care about it. You should be able to explain it to them. Of course the elevator pitch to your grandmother might be different than the elevator pitch to inner conference. But you have to develop the skill. So the way it works is if you state the problem that needs to be solved or that you're solving. People are always interested in common problems. So see if your problem can be related to real-life scenario or something larger. This doesn't have to be done too much because then it gets fluffy and thin. But topics like power, climate, food, education, disease everybody is interested in one of these topics. It's what as human beings we care about. So if you make five jumps, where do you connect to? This is important not so much in a research conference. In a research conference everybody knows the field. But let's say you're giving a public talk. But still it's a good idea to have some connection especially if you're going cross department. So when I meet my colleague from some other department these are the common areas that we both understand. And if my colleague starts from one of these and then jumps to his research, I'm more likely to listen. So you have to take this with a little bit of caution because I've seen some people who kind of talk very big and large and then you don't know what the substance is. That's the other extreme. But it's good to keep these in mind. Then the last one, I actually found this in some one biology professor. He was advising this. He said, tell something counter-intuitive or unexpected about your research. So his example is do you know that blind people also gesture? I think he was a psychologist studying vision and perception. Do you know that blind people also gesture even when one blind person is talking to another blind person on the phone? So you'll say why does a blind person need to gesture that on a phone? So that's the hook. See if you can connect your research to something of this nature. So this person was doing research on perception and gestures and vision and so on. So it was a good, it was something useful to this. So let me show you a couple of examples. So how, more about how. So Elevator Pitch doesn't have to be only written. You can create a presentation. So what we have our PhD students do is create a screen cast, which is a voice, a narration, plus screen capture. There are a lot of software available. It's there on the next page. I'll come back to the previous page. Many of these, Jing allows you to create five minute pitches free of cost. It's a two minute download. It's very easy to operate, many of these. And the moment you have visuals and pictures as well as voice, there is a personalization. Just create it, tell your students to put it on their mobile phone or some device. Everybody carries them. And you can show your research. 30 second clips, no more than that. All of these have very easy to follow tutorials. Some of them are paid. So Camtasia and Cam Studio, if you want the full version, it's paid. And it's a little costly. Your college may want to purchase it. But to create small, the first two I believe are, the first one I've used. Second one also one of my students has used. So let me show you a couple of examples. Atheritis is a very common disease and progresses with age. But what most people don't realize is that arthritis is more common than heart disease, more common than diabetes and more common than all the cancers put together. We are trying to coax stem cells to regrow the lost cartilage inside osteoarthritic knees. If we are successful, this will be the first time, the first treatment ever, to change the progression of this chronic disease. Very broad, but sometimes you do need very broad pitches. Did you get the first sentence? He says that arthritis is more common than heart disease, diabetes. So that's the hook. When we think of what are the more common diseases, we think heart diseases, sort of hear about it all the time, cancer. But this guy starts by saying, no, it's arthritis. And then you want to know what they have done to address it. So this institute, it's an organization that does work in stem cells. They had a contest where all senior, some 30 senior professors were asked to create elevator pitches for their own labs. And they went and created it. So most of them are like this. It's 30 second clips of the person speaking. So this is one way your students can do something like that. Go take a look, whichever ones you like, you can simply mimic them. The other example, let me tell you what this is. So this was a conference and the person, this is only a screencast and narration. The person who's speaking, first person couple, he's our, he was a PhD student, I mean he's still our PhD student. At this time, this year, I think he was in his second or third year, I don't remember. So he had to give, what we had done in the conference was that every speaker had to create a 30 second clip. And then our team here just put all of it together. We called them teasers. And then we played a 20 minute movie at the beginning of the conference so that the audience got an overview of the entire conference. So this is couple's elevator pitch. And what I want you to pay attention to here is the examples he gives in the beginning. 3D visualization skills are important in the various fields. Here is one, engineering drawing task. Even a top and side view of an object can visualize an object in 3D. Most people imagine this. Some might imagine this. And someone might also imagine this. This means that different people have different visualization skills. And it can be improved using blender. Let me just stop there. So what was his, what was his stock on? Can you get from here? Improving 3D visualization skills in engineering drawing. And how did he do it? Came in the last five seconds. He created, this is a software blender. It's an open source 3D software so he had created some training program with it. That was all he wanted to tell the audience at that point. So for 30 second clips, it has to be at this broad level. It can't be anything more detailed than this. Okay, any questions at this point? So there is one more activity. Do you want to create your own elevator pitch? Are you interested in having some rough outline? Want to start at least? Some yeses, one no and so on. Okay, let's do one thing. Let's work on it for about a short time. And then there is a full blown homework where you can do it later. Why it's good to do it here and when others are there is you will get a lot of ideas. Okay, and feedback about your own pitch. So again let's, you can do this as a think-pair share. And what, you can start with what you had earlier. The first scenario. Pick any one of these, don't pick both. So either you have to introduce your research at a conference. The other attendees are in your broad field but they don't know your specific research subfield. Or you personally are applying for a job at a new college. You don't like this college. Don't tell your principal I said that. But for some reason you know there is a better opening and you want to teach business communication or technical communication. Or something else. So individually write down those hundred words. You can take what you had earlier and you can refine it based on the good features that we discussed. The unique point, the specific details. Writing something which makes the listener care. Then pair with your neighbor and give each other feedback. And if you want one or two samples we can see. Spend a little bit time refining yours. This is, it's a difficult exercise. We made all our students do it. Then my colleague and I realized we had to do our own and it was really painful. But it was a good exercise because each time we have to introduce our department. Our pictures were more like our department pictures. So it's really worth spending ten minutes or so working on this. I have just picked one. It's just one that I liked. We'll do two examples. One is this, one more but you're not allowed to read out your own. You have to, if you like your neighbors you can nominate it and read it. Just look at your neighbors and I'll just randomly choose. We don't have much time, that's why. I'm sure all of you have really good ones. Look at what your neighbor has written if you like that. And not just if you like, you have to say what you like about it. So here is one. Most people who purchase, you listen? Most people who purchase mobile products. Go through online reviews before they purchase it. It is difficult for them to study all reviews as it is time consuming. We have developed an algorithm which gets user specifications and accordingly our system will generate results which gives optimal solution to the end user. So if you don't get the exact, I didn't say it very well either. The interesting context is first stated that people have to go through a lot of reviews. It's time consuming, problem is stated. It's common. Most of us when we are buying a product we have to read 16 reviews. What you want is, you want somebody to give you reviews? That's what they have done which are tailored to you. Something like this. Okay. One more example. Then we can conclude after that. You have to read your neighbors. You can't read your own. Your neighbor has to analyze it and see that, say why they like it. Not just that. Yeah, go ahead please. I'll be reading the speech we did for presenting a research in the conference. Okay. There's one example there. This is from my neighbor here in Patil. The pitch is like this. Facebook and Twitter nowadays need no introduction. More technically, they are the examples of huge data sharing on the cloud. You would not like to like someone to change your tweet or delete your personal communication with your friend. We call it a security loophole. We work on the developing data storage security model which assures the user for safety of his or her data. So I'm assuming that you have developed some code. Some security model which can ensure the security of your tweets which are publicly available. See in all these examples what you will see is that what you've seen is that the initial part is something which most of us can relate to and are interested in. Professor Sundar here mentioned one important point when you were writing it. That the unique, the USB or the uniqueness that you have to write in the research pitch should be more about your research. It's not about you as a person. Whereas when students are going for a job interview, it's a person who's more important because the person is being hired. But academia really has these very odd rules and more than rules it's these cultural guidelines that we all follow. We don't ever say how great I am. But you can say that look this research is exciting because so you speak through your research. So if you're talking about your research, the USB has to be about the research. On the other hand for students who are going for interviews, it can be about themselves as a person etc. So what next is, so when we will do this course again in the online part of the course and then the December workshop when you'll do it in your college. There'll be a home assignment for this session where I just want you to get familiar with it. You don't have to do anything where we ask the participants to basically choose a tool and create a video or a screencast. So if you're interested, go look through these links and download some of the software. If you're interested you can play with it. Conclusion, your pitch is not static. It refines over time. It's good to do video projects. And this is really not the last slide. Nobody asked me questions so I have to ask you questions. That's the way it works. So what were your takeaways from this session? Say one thing. The word elevator pitch. What else? You learnt how to start making your own. How to project yourself. How to remain focused. How to remain focused. How to stay focused, okay. How to make it crisp, okay. Okay. How to be crisp and up to the point. Okay. How to help them create their own elevator pitch. Focus on the benefit. How to impress others. Impress, okay. The goal of the elevator pitch is not necessarily to impress them, but to get them interested in your work. One more. So now I'm taking the discussion in a slightly different point. And this is especially for those who will be teaching this course or who need to teach other people how to teach this course. So you may want to include this as part of your session, maybe compressed one or so. So what are takeaways for you, not just in terms of content, but also in terms of teaching this topic. So what will you, I mean, you see the point of us doing the co-ordinators workshop here, I think Professor Cunnan mentioned it on day one, that it's not just the content, because if it's content, we can just give you links or videos. It's the pedagogy, the learning and the interactivity and all. So is there anything specific that you would like to use from this session? Yeah, not anything vague. You can say something like I'm going to use this activity or I'm going to, you are going to use exercises, okay? What I like is the new concept think, parent, share. Think, share is a very powerful group discussion or classroom discussion to strategy. I will also put a link to, we have given lots of tutorials on how to do think, share for domain related and other subjects. I can put a link, it's a long video. And we also created what's called activity constructors. So if you want to create your own think, share, you can just, it's like a worksheet. You put in your text in it and you are good to go. Some guidelines also on how many minutes for each. And similarly, another strategy which really works in a large classroom, when you want people to both work on their own as well as bring them out in a group discussion is the voting part. You have to have challenging questions. So the first questions were just for me to get to know you. I'm not talking of those. Those help if you want to get to know your students. But something like this one. This question, in this case, I mean, I did see one person somewhere there who had said that one is the correct answer. But if you want to get a debate going about something, sometimes you do want people to explore all angles. Give two pitches which are roughly this at the same level, but both have different strong points and different weak points. Half the people will say half your students will say one, half your students will say two. And that's a great way to go to the next slide, which is what makes a good elevator pitch. So both these classroom techniques you can use in any of your classes. Okay, I think our time is up. So I'll be around for the next 15 minutes or so if you have any other questions. Thank you for your lively participation.


In my video, The Benefits of Fenugreek Seeds, I profiled this study, in which young men were randomized to a sugar pill or fenugreek capsules for 8 weeks and got a significant improvement in upper body strength, lower body strength, and body composition, a significant reduction in body fat percentage. And the only side effect? It can make your sweat and pee smell like maple syrup. Seems like a bonus! These on immature castrated rats suggest the fenugreek muscle bulking is a testosterone effect, but we didn't know what happens in humans until now. Four randomized controlled trials put it to the test and saw a significant boost of total blood testosterone. And indeed, fenugreek appears to improve sexual function in men, for example, doubling the frequency of morning erections. What about the sexual function in women?  Drug companies have tried testosterone patches on women to try to increase sexual desire, but we're concerned about blood clots and long-term safety. What about a little fenugreek? A significant increase in testosterone compared to placebo and a boost in the estrogen estradiol, which resulted in both an increase in sexual desire and function, translating to about a doubling of sexual activity compared to placebo. If fenugreek causes an increase in estrogen levels, what about the efficacy of fenugreek for reducing menopausal symptoms? A significant reduction in menopausal symptoms across every single domain, for example, cutting the weekly numbers of hot flashes and night sweats in half over a period of three months. Other hormonal effects include an improvement in painful periods. What I like about this study is that they didn't use some proprietary extract, but just straight plain fenugreek powder that you'd buy at the store. Now they packed it into capsules just so they could pit it against the sugar pill placebo, but the dose they used is about a third of a teaspoon three times a day, taking the first three days of their period. A third of a teaspoon would cost less than five cents, and boom, a significant decrease in pain, and also appeared to improve other symptoms as well. While we're on a roll with hormonal effects, what about the effectiveness of fenugreek as a galactogog? No, not another sci-fi reboot. A galactogog is something that increases breast milk production in lactating mothers. And fenugreek fits the bill, and not just buy a little. In this randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trial in which breastfeeding women took less than a quarter teaspoon of fenugreek, less than a quarter teaspoon of ground ginger, and about a sixteenth of a teaspoon of turmeric every day, doubled their milk production within a month. About a 50% increase by week two and a 100% increase by week four. However, due to its potential stimulation on the uterus, fenugreek seeds should not be used during pregnancy, though this is all based on laboratory animal data, better safe than sorry.


General American English, also referred to as Standard American English, is a broad term used to describe a continuum of American English pronunciations that exhibit a lack of obvious regional, ethnic or socio-economic traits. General American English is characterized by a relatively high degree of roticity, anti-glottalization and flapping. It is generally considered the accent with the highest degree of prestige, commonly spoken in particular by newscasters and radio personalities. General American English was first coined to describe a generalized set of major regional dialects in the Northern, Midwestern and Mid-Atlantic United States. Recently, the American sociolinguist William Laboff expanded the definition of General American English to include North American English rotic varieties such as Western American English, Midland American English and Standard Canadian English.