Saket Vora

The QotW is making an appearance again. Not sure why this question popped into my head today, but I’ve got my own answer to it so here goes:

Q: What song(s) do you purposefully not listen to? Why not?

For me it’s Radiohead’s Street Spirit (Fade Out) off their album The Bends. And this isn’t just because I don’t like that album compared to their later stuff, but I will go out of my way to avoid listening to that song. I’ll credit Donny and his friends Chris and Kris for this. It was the summer of 2006, and I was driving up to Philadelphia from my research stint at the University of Maryland to meet up with Donny and his New Jersey friends to attend my first Radiohead concert. On the drive up I listened to all the Radiohead albums, starting with the Bends.

The concert was great. The moments after it, not so much. See, during the show I happened to be standing next to a rather large-ish fellow who became belligerent after I told him we’d discuss how to share our photos/videos after the concert ends, rather than discuss the details during the songs. He started acting like a jerk after it ended, and to my admiration Donny’s friends immediately stuck up for me as if I were one of their own. The guy and his thuggish entourage caught the attention of some of the security guards, and we made it off into the pouring rain.

Soaking wet over greasy pizza and fine beer at a hole-in-the-wall joint near Donny’s apartment, the song Street Spirit (Fade Out) came up as a song of bad omen for Donny, Chris, and Kris. Each accounted their own stories of ill happenings. Finally,  I said: “You know, I listened to the Bends on my way up here. Including that song. And then this guy gets all in my face.” They looked me, nodding gravely.

So since the summer of 2006, I have never listened to that song again.

In other music news, I was tinkering around with the ‘Genius’ playlist generator in iTunes, which creates a playlist of songs from your music library that “sound great together.” I particularly enjoyed one of them which was seeded by Iron & Wine’s The Trapeze Swinger, and I invite you to listen to the playlist here. It’s mellow-ish, the ideal kind of music I prefer when studying or needing to focus on work. I hope you enjoy it.

Last Friday I left work a few hours early (ie, 5:30pm) to catch the Caltrain up to the City. My friend Krupali was in town for a cancer conference and we were going to see the San Francisco Giants host the Chicago Cubs at AT&T park. It was my first Giants game, and I figured it’d be a good one to check out because Tim Lincecum was pitching for the Giants — and he’s in the running for a Cy Young award this year.

I got the tickets off Craiglist and printed them out via an electronic ticket “relay” that is run by the Giants site, which looked pretty legit. When the gate agent scanned Krupali’s ticket, it flashed green but he didn’t see it, so he scanned it again and of course it showed it had already been tagged. We headed over to the ’special issues’ line and tried it again, same story. Krupali nudged me try my ticket, and it worked. We told that agent what happened, and he just told Krupali to duck under the turnstile. Score.

The seats were in the lower level by 3rd base, but kinda far under the overhang (I got the tickets that afternoon). It’s a nice ballpark.

We caught up with things, had a veggie hot dog (hey, it’s San Francisco), and I even got to see the Big Unit come out at the end to close for the Giants. The game was brisk too — the Giants had zero offense, and scored no runs.

After the game ended, we walked a few blocks north of the ball park to eat a great Thai restaurant recommended by Karthik, one of Krupali’s friends who is working at VMWare and living up in SF. I had met Karthik on Krupali’s last visit to SF, at the Wine Bar in SOMA. The three of us caught a late dinner (the food was excellent) and had a wide ranging conversation. iPhones were out for a lot of it, as Karthik was showing off a new camera app he got (he’s an excellent photographer). Krupali and I also tried out the ‘Bump’ app, where both users activate it then do a fist bump to wireless send their contact info over. Neato!

I was meaning to meet up finally with Melih, but I let the night get away from me. Another weekend Melih, another weekend. Now, I need to make a trip down south to visit Krupali in LA since she’s visited the Bay Area three times already.

NBC and the NFL tried out an exciting new feature to complement their well produced broadcast of Football Night in America, the Sunday night prime-time football game. ESPN has been pioneering online video feeds of college football games on its ESPN360 service, sometime I’ve been using religiously these past few weekends (much to the detriment of my productivity). On Sunday, NBC and the NFL was going to broadcast the game online live, in HD, with in-browser DVR-like controls, and let the viewer switch between five different cameras at anytime during the game (main feed, overhead cable cam, sideline game, end zone cam, and “star” cam). For free.

Despite being a fun game, I felt like turning it off by halftime. Why? Because its not enjoyable to be bludgeoned to death by repetitive advertisements. I kept track of the online video advertisements shown to me during the 3 (three) hours that I had the video feed going:

Over 3 hours of primetime television to a user in the lucrative college educated, professional, 18-to-45 male demographic, I was shown 44 minutes of advertising and witnessed only 7 unique advertisements. Actually 5 if you don’t count NBC’s previews for the winter Olympics. I saw  the same Visa advertisement 30 times, often twice in the same commercial break. And I’ve now completely internalized the fact that Gillette can make me play like Tiger Woods, land the business deal, and score babes.

The problem? I’ve had a VISA credit card for nearly 6 years. I was a Sprint customer for 8 years before only recently switching to AT&T, for a good reason. I’m a vegetarian, so being told 15 times that Subway has a new chicken sandwich doesn’t do it for me. They had a lucrative demographic engaged to their site for 3 primetime viewing hours, and they utterly failed in providing their advertisers a return on investment.

What’s inexplicable to me is that we’re talking about the two of the biggest brands in America — the NFL and NBC. Using YouTube’s popularity as a benchmark, online video has been a ‘big deal’ for the past 3 years. The idea of online advertising has been around for over a decade. While TV represents ‘dumb’ advertising outlets that couldn’t tell advertisers who exactly they were reaching, the Internets can tell them a lot of information — even basic info like how long I’ve uniquely been watching your video feed. After all this, the concept of a “If User has seen Advertisement A more than N times, Show User Advertisement B”  seems to fail them? I often feel that I’m at  point where I’d rather just tell an advertising network what things I’m interested in, and suffer through somewhat interesting and relevant commercials rather than wanting to hammer thumbtacks into my eyes (although honestly, this year’s sports announcing crews are making that a more desirable experience anyway).

It’s no wonder then that there are a lot of online video advertising startups. It’s still amazing to me how these two huge brands can fail so spectacularly, especially since they were able to put together such a compelling online video product. Let’s see what happens next week.

My friend Melih and I have been discussing this year’s college football action on TokBox. Here’s my week 4 review.

Join in on the conversation on TokBox! Would love to hear your thoughts.

Finished up first two weeks. It feels great to be back, but frustrating to be in the ‘bring up’ phase where I don’t feel like I’m adding as much value as I could, or feel that I should.

Came down feeling pretty ill yesterday, did some (involuntarily) fasting since then. Not sure what it is, but it sucks. Had to cancel plans. On the flip side, I came back to my office today to find a new MacBook Pro on my desk. Shiny! Really folks, it’s too much.

With fall concert season, maybe I’ll have more questions to ask. Do you have any questions you’d like to post? Let me know!

Q: Imagine being given the chance to direct a music video of your choosing. You have full creative direction, you can bring on any director you want and can work with any band. What song(s) would you want to make a music video for?

I ask because on the drive to work each morning, I think about how I’d shoot a video for Fold in Your Hands by Passion Pit. Can’t get enough of that song right now.

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And at the risk of sounding like a broken record (see what i did there?), I’ll bring up one other thing I like about Passion Pit — the depth of their lyrics and how they’re able to wrap them in a candy coated indie pop veneer. Consider Eyes as My Candles.

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Lyrics excerpt:

Some unguarded room:
a smoky figure fills me full,
makes my head swell in ruin.
My family kneels at the pew,
They nod, “We believe in what you’re doing!”
I feel it rise above me,
the western landscape’s towering,
and from my shell of a body
the flowers blossom for picking.

Why do I always need to need you when you’re fleeing?
Where do you go when I’m around?
What have I done, what have I got that’s so defeating?
And have the nerve to wear the crown?

Oh, na na na na na na, hey! hey! hey! (x4)

I’ve waited and waited for someone to take it.
Don’t fight it, don’t bother an inch for another.
Don’t listen, don’t hear them, they’re in this together.
I’ve learned well, now hear me, there’s much to be fearing.
I’m used to your absence, your faceless distraction.
I’ve painted your patterns but found them attractive.
Now I’ve been leaning towards a life far more candid,
though lead through the dark with your eyes as my candles,
and your life, and my life’s directions can render.
And all of a sudden you left me to handle
the reasons that never forbid me to step out.
And somehow or somewhere I found out the secret -
To say it alive without actually breathing.

Maybe I’m just thinking about it to hard, but I just find it so intriguing. The interweaving voices in the last stanza, the children’s voices in the background connotating the blissful ignorance of childhood, the challenging tone of the words itself. Makes me think that if you substitute the pop for folk, you’d have a Sufjan Stevens-esque song. Pretty great.

Don’t forget to answer the question at the top!

Shiny! All thanks to my parents, who tackled the Sprint folks to knock down the early termination fee…or else this would have come in March. Thanks Mom and Dad. One less thing my co-workers can make fun of me with…

I’m very fortunate to have Joseph as my manager and mentor because he is deeply interested in finding ways of continually increasing the effectiveness of his team —  whether it’s about working better together, on optimizing processes, or allocating resources. He has four to five direct reports, plus three or four interns at any given time during the year. He has taken a particular interest with the intern program — even folks from other groups recognize how unusually strong it is year in and year out. He routinely seems to have more than a dozen overall tasks and mini-projects that he spreads out to the whole team, and keeps track of them all.

As I stopped by his office this week, he offered an insightful re-framing of the idea of a ‘progress report’, an otherwise standard part of any team endeavor. Members of high performing teams typically have multiple on-going parallel projects and tasks. Prioritization of these tasks is crucial skill, but the awareness shift is that with high performing teams it is assumed that any given task will be completed, it’s simply a matter of when. So rather than provide extensive updates on the progress you’ve made on a given task, Joseph is more interested in what tasks are you’ve not made progress on.

It’s a good point, and it’s not intended to be critical either. There are only so many hours in a day, and it’s appropriate for some tasks to be delayed. Most team meetings begin by going ‘around the horn’, with people explaining what they’ve done since the last meeting. Positive news travels fast, bad news travels slow. It’s easier for us to talk about the things we’ve made progress on. But by immediately getting to the things not being addressed, a manager can more quickly begin to assess the prioritization of tasks and start to re-allocate resources.

A few other changes:

• I’ve moved out of the wonderful Rains on-campus apartments over to a house about 1.5 miles away in Menlo Park. I’m living with two roommates, both who graduated with Master’s in computer science (focus in human computer interaction) from Stanford. Troy, who has been living in the house for a year, went to Georgia Tech undergrad. He was TAing the iPhone development class at Stanford, is working on his own iPhone app (which looks amazing, can’t wait until it’s out!), and is the one writing an iPhone development book too. Great guy. To other housemate is Michael, who lived across from me in Rains and interned in the iPod software team last summer. He’s interning at Box.net heading up their mobile applications suite — hopefully it’ll turn into a fulltime position soon. I’ve updated the contact info to reflect the new address.
• I’ve got a Google Voice number: (650) 453-VORA (VORA = 8672). It’s a Palo Alto area code. It’s just pointing to voicemail, but any voicemail gets speech-to-text processed then emailed to me. Just for fun right now.
• Since joining Apple, I’ll be using a Mac more and more as a full-time computer. Still got my 2 year old ThinkPad though, but need to get a new keyboard for it before it’s back in top form. It was neat, I was talking to Sara (one of Joseph’s interns this fall term) yesterday and she actually said that ThinkPads were her favorite computer.
• I’m trying to see the best route to getting an iPhone. My Sprint contract is due up at the end of March, but I’d really like to get one soon. There’s a termination fee involved that I’d rather want to avoid paying. It almost seems inevitable now.
• My grandmother is visiting soon from India, and there’s going to be a family reunion around mid-to-late October back in Cary to celebrate Diwali, the Indian end of the year/new year festivities.
• Currently begin seriously researching places to live in San Francisco. More on that later.

Here’s an announcement I meant to post earlier this week:  I’ve accepted a job offer with the iPod hardware team at Apple. It’s the same group that I worked with last summer, and here’s how it happened: since graduating in June, I had been aggressively seeking out opportunities in the greentech sector. I spoke with several startups, some venture backed companies (like Tendril), even some big players. I spoke with a wonderful recruiter at NREL, which offered to fly me out to Colorado to interview with the team. But over and over again, I found that most of these companies wanted people with at least 2 or 3 years of experience. With Tendril’s case (the company I was very excited about — a consumer facing home energy management and smart grid company), I even had a VC who sits on their board of directors forward my resume into them (thanks Amit!). Same story though. And I placed a high importance of staying in the Bay Area.

So then in July my manager from Apple, Joseph, opened up the possibility of coming back to Apple. I have a great relationship with him — he’s also an NC State grad, really interested in green building design and energy efficiency (currently designing his new home in Santa Cruz), and he understands that I have interests in startups and greentech. He and his manager liked the work I did last summer, and felt that I could add value to their team and that I can learn a lot from them. The more I thought about it, the more it started to make sense. And I sought advice and perspective from my network out here, and there was an overwhelming positive reaction to the offer. It is such an unusual group of people to work with — I spoke with people there who have worked at both big companies and startups and they saw their group as one with a spirit and mentality of a startup but with the resources of a big company. The teams are cross-functional, meaning I get to see all aspects of a product cycle and maybe even a trip over to China too.

But here’s the last thing: I loved coming to work everyday last summer to work with this team. And I’m realizing that finding a work environment that you truly enjoy isn’t as commonplace as it should be.

This is going to be a great experience, and an important one that continues to develop my skills and also build up some financial resources to set out of my own in the near future. I’m not sure now how long it’ll last…there is so much to learn. Don’t worry — I’m still keeping the networks going with energy stuff and all my other interests. I appreciate all the support.

In the morning Dad and I headed to Dr. Walsh’s house in Cary. He invited us over and we got to see all the amazing remodeling work he’s been working on for months and then chatted about the Engineering Entrepreneurs Program, the current environment at NC State, what Dad and I was up to, and what we could all be doing differently. We must have stayed there three hours and it was a delight. I still need to write up the ’student entrepreneurs-in-residence’ idea and send it out to see if it can get some traction.

After spending the previous day in Raleigh, I ended up heading back there for the college football home opener game, NC State vs. South Carolina. Mike and I headed to Chubby Tacos to meet up with Ben for dinner, where we watched the kickoff and the 1st quarter. Then we hopped over to Snookers where Jordan, Greg, and Kelly were playing as part of their pool league. Jordan and Greg had made it into a tournament, but it was amusing to see Jordan’s Red Hat books sprawled across a table and him tapping away at a terminal between turns, as he had a major exam the following day.

The game was — is it a surprise? — an embarrassment as NC State played lackluster offense for the game. It was uninspiring, not fitting for being host to ESPN’s College Gameday Kickoff on primetime TV. Oh well, our defense actually held up better than I had expected, so we’ll prep for next week.

Next couple of days were spent at home with the parents; I met up with Megha at Goodberry’s on Saturday night to catch up — she’s headed to South Korea on a English language teaching program. She was excited to learn that the Korean alphabet makes sense to someone who knows Gujarati and Megha has been a big fan of Korean TV for years now. Her accent is impeccable, and even struck up a brief conversation with a Korean family at Goodberry’s….in Korean.

On Sunday morning I headed into Chapel Hill to Naman’s house, where I met up with friends Derek and Pavak. Mike joined and we headed over a nearby middle school for a nice game of ultimate frisbee with a bunch of Naman’s friends and friends of friends from UNC med school and graduate school. Met a lot of people for the first time (like Kamal, Sapana’s friend who has a huge crush on Carl Kasell from Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me) and afterward we all gathered back at Naman’s house for Sunday brunch. What a bustling lively crowd — people moving about cooking over a dozen dishes, the kitchen table covered with goodies, etc. Really nice way to spend a Sunday morning; I’m jealous.

Last full day in Cary! The whole family made one last trip to Goodberry’s with Mike and Naman joining us, then I did some packing for my 7am flight back to the Bay. What a fulfilling a trip this was. Makes me truly appreciate what astonishingly great people I have the pleasure of calling friends.

Last week, I made a trip back to NC State to visit friends, see mentors, and check out some of the new construction around campus. I met Kelly for lunch at a new mediterranean restaurant (across from Marrakesh), and scoped out all the new construction along Hillsborough St. After years of talking about the roundabouts, they are actually going forward with it!

After lunch I meandered over to Poe and met up with Keith — one of my best friends from high school who took a surprising direction (to almost everyone who knew him) and pursued psychology/sociology at Appalachian State before getting his MA in the same subject at Wake Forest. He’s working as a lab assistant at NC State for a bit before going back to grad school. He was headed to lunch, so I opted for a second lunch with a slice of pizza at I Heart NY Pizza. I haven’t seen Keith in nearly 4 years, but it was so remarkable to see the same mannerisms and expressions pop up — except now in conversations about agent rationality or applied statistics in state policy instead of conversations about Counter-Strike or Photoshop.

I made my way down to Tally Student Center (pleased to see the fountain operational) and had a coffee with Ben at the new gym complex and walked over with him as he got his new student ID (he’s starting a grad program in materials science). It was nice to hear his work with the crew team and how busy his summer was.

By half past three I was back on east campus where I visited the Park Scholarships Office. I greeted the ever present and ever gracious Rosalyn, met the new staff members Joy and Holly, and caught up with Eva (now the director). I brought along the tassel I wore to Stanford’s graduation and a little Stanford pennant as a gift — a small token of appreciation for how the Park program helped me reach that moment. The latest class of Park Scholars (c/o 2013) was about to have their weekly meeting, so Eva invited me along to say a few words to the class. I got to meet the new Park Faculty Scholars who were cool, and the other Park staff member Bob. I’m going to try to work with him over the next month or so to host a virtual ‘networking/grad school’ info session — to try to give some advice from recent alums to those interested in post-baccalaureate endeavors in academia.

After bidding the Parkies farewell, I finally made it over to Centennial Campus and Engineering Building 2 — home to the electrical engineering department. John — a fellow Apple intern from the spring and summer was there and I hung out with him and his friend, a bigger John.Fun guys. EB3 looks almost complete too — wow. John was headed to EEP (the same senior design track I took) so I tagged along and poked my head into Dr. Walsh’s office — we spoke briefly, and scheduled coffee for tomorrow morning at his house.

I left campus and headed deeper into Raleigh, to Greg and Kelly’s apartment. After much confusion (Greg swore I’d visited before) he found me and we caught up for a bit before the three of us headed out to Jordan’s house for an evening cookout, with a pit stop at Whole Foods to pick up food and drink. At Kelly’s suggestion, I gave these tofurkey beer brats a try. The cookout and Jordan’s home went great — we all pitched and gifted the grill to him as a housewarming present. Really nice home too. Mike came by, Ben and Will stopped over, and John came too. Jordan “the NC drill” Price was stuck at work later than expected, but made his entrance just in time to enjoy bourbon chocolate pecan pie. Mmmmm.

I mentioned some of the new places in downtown Raleigh that they frequented in the summer like the Foundation bar or Boylan Bridge Brew Pub, and we decided to hit up Foundation. Awfully nice of them, considering it was a school night too! Foundation was everything they told me it was — a nice conversation oriented bourbon themed bar built into the excavated foundation of a building. Outstanding homemade sodas and tonics — actual ginger ale with fresh ginger. Mike showed off his game, Jordan and I told stories about iPod land, and Greg gave Jordan an update on where Kyma was. What a great place — it’s amazing to me how different Raleigh downtown feels.

What a day! I’m so lucky to have friends like these. NC State suffered a blow to its leadership up high this summer, but some much needed facelifts are completed across campus and big projects long discussed are finally getting underway.  Nevertheless, you get the sense that it’s a strong rebuilding year, and the best days are still ahead.

My North Carolina visit comes to a close, and I’m heading back to the Bay today. It’s been a long time since I’ve done so much and spent time with so many people I cherish in just a week. I’ll be writing en route, and will be posting more in the days to come. Some big news too.