Thank you for the opportunity, Mr. Toastmaster and a very Good morning, Ladies and Gentlemen.
At around 1PM on 27th of Nov 1978, Lord Siva blessed my parents with a baby boy. By then, they would not have expected that the child would take this long to break the ice :-).
Because of the date and time of my birth, my father was not allowed to see me for first 21 days. He talked to me about it many-a-times but, I did not realize that pain unitl I became a father.
My mother always tells me an incident when I was in my 1st standard. I came home with my report card and I proudly announced my 13th rank in the class to my parents. My mother explained me patiently about the importance of coming 1st and the whole ranking system. By the way, did I mention the class strength ? it was 15 :-) .
How many of us here stole money from either father's pocket or mother's handbag ? :-) During my school days, I was passionate about cycling. We used to get a cycle for rent for 50 paisa per half-hour. But, I was never given even a paisa as pocket money. I still remember those days when I used to steal money from my Grand-pa's pocket for cycling.
Many of you may already know that I am a very big fan of Supreme Hero, Chiranjeevi. How many of you are ? I think, I was studying 3rd or 4th class when two of his films, were big flops. At the same time, there was a blockbuster from Balakrishna. I was seriously dissapointed. I went into my study room, locked the door, cried a lot and took out one of the many Chiru photos that I had and started scolding him, "See, you stupid fellow. You should have acted in that Balayya's movie which is a big hit. Your next movie should be a blockbuster, if not I will tear off all your photos." The next movie was Lankeswarudu, which was again a big flop and you know, what I did ? I postponed the tearing off for the next movie :-)
After my graduation in applied chemistry, I got a job as a chemist. I rejected the offer and joined MCA for further stuides. I could not justify my decission to many of my classmates. But, I soon realized the need for me to work on my comupter knowledge and Hari Kishore taught me with a lot of patience.
I always believed in Guru-Mukha-Vidya i.e., knowlede must come from teacher. It makes you familiar with the topic and gives you psychological advantage while reading it for exams. I followed it when I was in school and in college too.
Each of us must have one or more inspiring icons, right? My role model is, late Mr. Govinda Rao. While I was searching for a job in 2001, I was fortunate to meet this great icon. He was an acctuary. He was around 80+ years old who could not even walk properly and owned around 8-9 apartments in Hyderabad. He had two computers and few MS office books with him. One day, I could not stop asking him, "why you are still working, when you cannot do it? ". He explained me, "Never stop working. You may not be able to stop your body from becoming old, but you can certainly do it with your brain. At any stage of your life, if you are idle, you are dead."
Once we were out from college in 2001, it was a recission time and with a lot of difficulty I was able to get into my first job. I was into technology for around 9 years. I worked on different Microsoft technologies including VB, ASP, VC++, .NET, Sql Server etc in various domains, banking, finance, pharma and HR.
Respecting my interest, Kiran provided me the opportunity to move into my dream role of Product Management. This is Siva Kumar, working as Product Manager for 2x BrassRing product with Kenexa, Vizag, a proud father of two little devils who is learning about Social and Mobile. and thank you each and everyone for listening to me.
