99Tribes by ActiveGarage – Building Valuable Relationships

Today, I would like to congratulate my friends at ActiveGarage for launching their flagship project  - 99Tribes which is a people discovery engine for Twitter.(See the announcement)

In real life, we quickly build connection with people who share common interests. 99Tribes allows you to discover people on Twitter who share your interests.

Consider the following:

Based on the patented Rawsugar technology, you can start discovering people by typing what you are interested in (popular examples being: marketing, sales, blogging etc.)

Like any directory, 99Tribes will show the search results. What happens next shows the power of discovery.

On the left column, you will notice a set of tags. These tags show the “other” interests of people displayed in the search results.

For example, marketing may be your interest and you search on Marketing. Looking at the tags on the left you may notice that a set of people interested in marketing are interested in music too. You click on music and now the search results are updated to reflect people who are interested in Marketing and Music. It does not stop there. The tags get updated and you may notice that there are number of people who are interested in Music and Marketing are also interested in Fashion and Art. Or Camping or Hiking.

This is a brilliant concept because it allows you to connect to like minded people.

The world of Twitter is magical world because it empowers you to build meaningful connections by having authentic conversations. It is no more about just building ‘connections’ but about building ‘valuable relationships’ – 99Tribes is a brilliant concept and also an opportunity to find more like minded people whom you can connect with to build meaningful relationships.

Check it out at 99Tribes.com

Bonus: Also check out why my friend Becky Robinson (at Mountain State University’s School of Leadership Development) loves social media – and what it means for leaders.

You might also like revisiting a series of 14 Quality and Improvement articles I wrote at ActiveGarage as a part of #QUALITYtweet series.

#QUALITYtweet at Reflection Leadership (Thanks to Tom Glover)

Tom Glover is a “Leadership Friend” who hosts Reflection Leadership Blog. I came to know Tom via our common leadership community over at Twitter. We have been exchanging ideas and thoughts on leadership via Twitter and Tom is also a regular reader of this blog.

My book #QUALITYtweet has a chapter dedicated to ‘Management, Leadership and Quality’ and I thought Tom would enjoy reading the ideas presented in the book. I sent him a copy of #QUALITYtweet for review a few months back. Tom loved the book and decided to devote one full week of his blog posts to #QUALITYtweet which would include his review of the book, my interview in two parts and finally a guest post from me that looks at intersection of Quality and Reflection Leadership. This week, #QUALITYtweet features on Reflection Leadership Blog and here are a few links that you can follow (I will keep updating this post for more links to come in this week):

• Tom’s review of #QUALITYtweet where he says:

I was continually surprised throughout the book when entry after entry continued to reinforce much of what I know about quality management and even gave me some new things to think about.

The beauty of the short “micro” entries is that in many cases they are designed to invoke our own thought processes about the topic instead of just instructing. The format of the book also makes it easy to go back and reread.

• #QUALITYtweet – An Interview with Tanmay Vora – Part 1. An excerpt:

The purpose of any quality management system is to build a quality oriented culture (internal goal) and deliver exceptional value for money to customers (external goal).

In a knowledge-intensive business environment, people deliver services and products, not machines. Hence they are at the core of the quality equation. Great people deliver great services.

Thank you so much Tom!

Monday Thoughts (Thanks to Paul Schwend)

Paul Schwend is a wonderful friend who lives in Florida and is referred to as an ‘Insurance Man’. Paul made my weekend by sending me a wonderful book titled “Soul Happy” – a brilliant compilation (by Kobi Yamada) of soulful thoughts on some of the core facets of life. My family read the book and totally enjoyed the compilation. It is a perfect reading material for the month of December – a month of reflection, rumination and peeping within ourselves. There is something special about December, and more so if you are born in this month!

Here are a few thoughts from the book as we are about to start a fresh week with a Monday.

On Abundance:

For every beauty there is an eye somewhere to see it. For every truth there is an ear somewhere to hear it. For every love there is a heart somewhere to receive it. – Ivan Panin

On Gratitude

…it is not joy that makes us grateful, it is gratitude that makes us joyful. – Brother David Steindl-rast.

On Essence

In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with the present time. – Leonardo Da Vinci

You need to read the book for more profound insights.

Last week, I received the paperback version of my book #QUALITYtweet – what a feeling to have your first book in your hands for the first time ever. Some excellent reviews of book are coming in and hence I have put up a Book Review” page, where I will share excerpts of review comments. Last week, #QUALITYtweet was reviewed by cool friend Utpal Vaishnav (read the review here) and the GREAT Michael Wade (read the review here). Encouraging!

If you would like to receive a review copy and post a review on your blog, contact me to drop a note and I will be happy to send you a copy of the book.

It is said that the best gift you can give someone is a gift of ideas. Paul Schwend has just done that, and I cannot thank him more for this generous gesture.

Here’s wishing Paul Schwend and all the readers of this blog, a FANTASTIC week ahead!

#QUALITYtweet – Book Release

My first book #QUALITYtweet – 140 bite-sized ideas to deliver quality in every project, released on 11-Nov-09 is now available on Amazon (Paperback and Kindle Versions). Check it out. I can’t wait to have the paperback version in my hands (shipped and expected to arrive in India next week).

This is both a happy and proud moment for me. This is just the beginning, and a fantastic one.

This book focuses on people, process and leadership and how they impact quality culture of the organization.

Nicholas Bate, who reviewed the book recently says - “I’ve always enjoyed Tanmay’s blog for its succinct approach and he has managed to transfer this to his book : it’s  full of shots of wisdom. It is ideal as a rapid reminder for all of us which could easily  be read on a commute. It would be great for a presenter who wishes to add some key messages . And brilliant to issue to your team.”

My book writing journey has been fascinating so far, and YOU can be a part of it. If you are a blogger and would like to get involved, just drop a comment here OR send a note to tanmay [dot] vora [at] gmail.com. I will send an eBook/paperback version for you to read and write a review on your blog. If you’re not a blogger, you can read the book announcement and learn more about the book. You can purchase the book from Happy About Store or Amazon.

P.S: If you are reading post via your email, just click on “Display Images Below” to view book image.

Announcing the article series - “QUALITYtweet”

I am glad to announce a series of articles on Quality that I will be writing at Activegarage.com. This series is a collection of 12 chosen tweets from my upcoming book “#QUALITYtweet – 140 Bite-Sized Ideas to Deliver Quality in Every Project” and ideas that expand 12 tweets from the book. These insights will help readers frame their quality strategy by effectively leveraging processes, people and leadership to build a customer-centric organization.

This series will run for almost over two weeks with one article being posted everyday. The first one “Quality is a long-term differentiator” is already up for you to read.

Here is an excerpt from the article:

Economists say that the best way to get good return from the stock market is to have an investment timeframe of a few years and not a few months. Short-term gains may be a stroke of luck – but luck is has never been a sustainable strategy! Same principles apply to your quality improvement initiative. Without a commitment to improve and long term thinking on processes, you may have successes based on individual heroism but never a sustainable model that delivers consistent quality.

I am extremely excited about this series and look forward to your views and comments there. Quality touches us all in products we use and services we avail. Your comments and views will certainly help taking the topic to next level with some great ideas.

Thanks in advance for reading and contributing. Stay tuned for more articles in the series.

Announcing my new book: #QUALITYtweet - 140 bite-sized ideas to deliver quality in every project

Writing a book (at least one in my lifetime) was my dream and I am glad to announce that my dream is finally coming true with my first book titled “#QUALITYtweet – 140 bite-sized ideas to deliver quality in every project”.

This book is a compilation of 140 ideas on quality management. Each idea is in form of a tweet – no longer than 140 characters. Twitter’s popularity has proven that you can indeed say a lot in 140 characters.

The inspiration for this book came from Rajesh Setty – my mentor and a very good friend. This book is a part of Rajesh Setty’s #TH!NKtweet series. I cannot thank him enough for his generosity.

The basic premise of this book is that Quality is still a very heavy subject with lot of focus on models, frameworks and theories. With limited time to read, people want short and practical insights on how quality can be managed. This is a book you can read in less than 30 minutes. You can read it over and over again, because each tweet will prompt you to think.

The foreword of #QUALITYtweet is written by Dr. Pankaj Jalote who is an accomplished author, academician and a veteran in the field of Software Quality and Processes. You can read more about him here. Many thanks to him.

I also thank Lisa Haneberg, Skip Angel, Phil Gerbyshak and Michael Wade for their kind words of advance praise. They have been great teachers for me over past few years and they continue to enlighten me. Utpal Vaishnav is a cool friend who reviewed the book with lot of love and care. I thank all my peers at Gateway TechnoLabs who have been extremely supportive and encouraging. Readers of this blog have never failed to inspire me.

The book will hit the stands on 11/11/2009, my daughter’s third birthday! Stay tuned for more updates on #QUALITYtweet in the time to come.