Climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest free-standing mountain in the world at 19,341 feet, was more than just a trek, it was a test of endurance, preparation, teamwork, and spirit. Over seven days, covering close to 70 km, enduring freezing winds, sleepless nights, and an unforgettable 11-hour summit push, I experienced the journey of a lifetime. Here’s a complete breakdown of my experience, every detail, every lesson, and every memory.

Making the Commitment

Every journey starts with a decision, and for Kilimanjaro, that first decision is not about boots or jackets, it’s about commitment. Until you commit, everything else feels like daydreaming. The moment you put down a small advance payment or book that refundable flight, the trek stops being an idea and starts becoming real.

One of the hardest questions at this stage is who to climb with. Do you go with friends you already know? Do you find an existing group and join them? Or do you sign up solo and trust the mountain to connect you with new people? Whatever the choice, the group matters more than you think, the right team can make the difference between a miserable climb and an unforgettable adventure.

We evaluated multiple trekking companies, comparing packages, reviews, and recommendations. Eventually, we chose Pamoja Kilimanjaro & Safaris (Pamoja fittingly means together). It turned out to be one of the best decisions we made. The guides were attentive and kind, the porters tireless and cheerful. They carried our loads, sang along the trail, taught us Swahili, and lifted our spirits when altitude tried to bring us down.

That said, I did notice a few other companies on the trail that looked a bit more “professional” or premium, for example, Alteeza. But honestly, I don’t think they offered anything significantly different from what we got.

Here’s the most important advice I can give anyone planning Kilimanjaro: go for the luxury package. It might cost a few hundred dollars more, but the difference it makes is enormous:

• Private toilets instead of crowded shared ones.

• A comfortable 4-star hotel stay before and after the trek.

• Extra porters (our group of six had thirty people supporting us!).

The porter-to-climber ratio blew my mind. These men and women were machines, they would leave camp after us, carrying massive loads, and arrive before us to set up tents, toilets, and hot meals. Sometimes, if someone in the group was struggling, they would hike back down a kilometer just to help carry a daypack. And all of this while still singing, chatting, and laughing.

We also made a smart decision to upgrade our tents with cots. For about $150 per person for the week, we got a tent that included a cot, mattress, and sleeping bag. It was a twin-sharing setup, so $300 per tent, and worth every penny. Crawling onto the ground after a long day’s hike would have been miserable, but with the cots, we slept comfortably each night and had space to move around.

Looking back, committing to Pamoja, investing in the luxury package, and upgrading our tents were some of the best choices we made. They set the tone for the entire trek: a balance of challenge and comfort, hardship and joy. Without those decisions, the journey would have been much harder than it needed to be.

Building Your Tribe

Once you’ve committed, the next most valuable step is to build your tribe. This doesn’t just mean assembling a hiking group, it means creating a small community that carries you through the months of preparation.

For us, this started with a WhatsApp group. We had nine people in the beginning, though three eventually dropped out before the trek. Still, the chats became our lifeline: we shared photos from our training hikes, posted our workout updates, swapped gear advice, and motivated each other on days when training felt like a chore.

This group was also a practical tool. We compared shopping lists, debated the pros and cons of different boots and rain gear, and double-checked every little item we might need for the hike. The anticipation, excitement, and encouragement created momentum. By the time we landed in Tanzania and met face-to-face, we already felt like friends. I was really glad that my cousin Tejas signed up with me.

That pre-trip bond made a huge difference. On tough days on the mountain, we didn’t feel like six individuals, we felt like a team that had already been through a journey together.

Training for the Climb

Kilimanjaro is not a technical climb, you don’t need ropes or crampons. But don’t mistake that for easy. The real challenge is stamina, altitude, and the grind of walking uphill for hours on end, day after day. Training for this climb is non-negotiable.

I trained for about five to six months before the trek. My routine looked like this:

• Strength training: For the first three months, I did two sessions a week. In the last two to three months, I upped it to three sessions a week. This built endurance and power in my legs and upper body, which was crucial for carrying the daypack and keeping pace on steep sections.

• Stair climbing: I live in a 12-floor apartment building. The stairs became my training ground. I started with 30 minutes, then built up to an hour, and eventually two full hours of continuous stair climbing. This turned out to be the best preparation for the endless uphill grind on summit day.

• Hikes: I did weekend hikes around Bangalore. Most of them were only 2–3 hours, so they weren’t extremely challenging, but they kept me active. The real gem was a monsoon trek in Kudremukha. It was an 8-hour hike, covering 17 km and a 3,500 ft elevation gain. It rained the entire time, which gave me a chance to test my rain gear, waterproof gaiters, and shoes in real conditions. That trek was an excellent precursor to Kilimanjaro.

Looking back, the strength training and stair climbs were game-changers. Without those, I don’t think I would have had the endurance or confidence to push through the 7 day hike and esp the Summit night. Here is a glimpse into the Training plan that I used.

Prepping and Packing

Preparation doesn’t stop at training, it extends to what you pack. The right gear can make your trek comfortable; the wrong gear can make every day miserable.

To get my packing right, I spent hours watching videos from Ultimate Kilimanjaro on YouTube. The channel goes into meticulous detail about every piece of gear, layering strategies, and even daily life on the mountain. That advice was invaluable.

Some key lessons and must-haves from my own experience:

• Duffel bag & organizers: I rented a duffel bag (~$20) for the porters to carry. Inside it, I used 8–10 small compartment bags (from Mokabara). Labeling and compartmentalizing saved enormous time and frustration at camp.

• Rain gear: Ponchos paired with gaiters worked better than rain jackets and backpack covers. Jackets are fine, but in heavy rain, ponchos kept both me and my daypack dry.

• Lantern: This is one item I wish I had brought. Headlamps are great while hiking, but at night in the tent, a small lantern would have made everything easier.

• Electronics: An iPhone was more than enough for photos. Don’t lug heavy DSLRs or camcorders. My cousin’s Insta360 was a fun addition, giving us some cool panoramic shots and videos.

The single biggest lesson: keep your daypack as light as possible (≤5 kg). Water, electrolytes, and a few snacks are all you really need. Everything else should go in the duffel for the porters.

A Complete list of things you need to plan the trip.

Health, Safety & Logistics

Beyond gear and fitness, there are health and logistical preparations that are just as critical:

• Vaccinations & Medication: We all took Diamox, 125 mg in the morning and evening, starting the day before the climb. On summit night, we added an extra dose (125 mg). It helped immensely with acclimatization.

• Visa & Insurance: Apply for your Tanzania visa at least 3–4 weeks before. Carry good travel insurance that covers high-altitude trekking.

• Tips: This is a huge part of Kilimanjaro culture. Expect to give 20–25% of the trek cost as tips. Prepare envelopes for each porter, cook, and guide. Carry plenty of $1, $5, $10, and $20 bills. Avoid $100s. At the end, there’s a big tipping ceremony where you hand out envelopes, it’s personal, meaningful, and deeply appreciated by the crew.

• Currency & Connectivity: Carry dollars for tips and small expenses. On the mountain, Airtel India roaming worked, but Vodacom was the best local option. Shockingly, we even got 4G signal at some camps.

These things may feel secondary when you’re still in the planning phase, but on the mountain, they make all the difference between stress and peace of mind.

The Trek – Day by Day

Each day on Kilimanjaro is unique, different terrain, different challenges, different memories. Here’s how it unfolded for us:

Arrival (Pre-Hike)

Arrive a day or two early if you can. We landed in Moshi, settled into our hotel, and spent time bonding with the group. We also visited the town, had great coffee, did a little souvenir shopping, and double-checked our gear. Renting the duffel bags here was simple and cheap (~$20). Compartmentalizing everything into labeled bags made camp life so much easier.

Day 1: Machame Gate → Machame Camp

• Elevation: 4,380 ft → 9,350 ft

• Distance: 11 km | Time: 5–7 hrs | Habitat: Rainforest

Excitement levels were high, and so were our daypack weights (8–9 kg). Big mistake. Ideally, it should be ≤6 kg. The rainforest was lush and wet. Ponchos and gaiters worked far better than jackets. By evening, we reached camp to find popcorn, tea, coffee, and a hot dinner waiting. The food on this trek was consistently excellent, hearty soups, pastas, rice, and more.

Day 2: Machame Camp → Shira Cave

• Elevation: 9,350 ft → 12,500 ft

• Distance: 5 km | Time: 4–6 hrs | Habitat: Heath

A short but steep day. The trail was rocky, but the views of Mount Meru were spectacular. At Shira Camp, the temperature dropped sharply, and the night sky exploded with stars. For many of us, mild altitude symptoms began here, headaches and nausea. Staying hydrated was the key.

Day 3: Shira Cave → Lava Tower → Barranco Camp

• Elevation: 12,500 ft → 15,190 ft → 13,044 ft

• Distance: 10 km | Time: 6–7 hrs | Habitat: Alpine Desert

This was a classic acclimatization day, climb high, sleep low. The push to Lava Tower at 15,000 ft was physically and mentally taxing. Heavy breathing, chest tightness, and fatigue were common. Coming down to Barranco felt endless and exhausting, but the night sky there was a reward in itself: galaxies, constellations, and the glowing peak of Kilimanjaro.

Day 4: Barranco Camp → Karanga Camp

• Elevation: 13,044 ft → 13,106 ft

• Distance: 5 km | Time: 4–5 hrs | Habitat: Alpine Desert

Day 4 was adrenaline-packed, the famous Barranco Wall. Narrow paths, large rock steps, and the famous “Kissing Rock” crossing kept our hearts racing. Porters glided past us with ease, balancing heavy loads. At Karanga, the entire team of porters and guides surprised us with songs and dances, and soon we were all joining in. This was the day we truly felt the spirit of “Pamoja - together.”

Day 5: Karanga Camp → Barafu Camp

• Elevation: 13,106 ft → 15,331 ft

• Distance: 4 km | Time: 4–5 hrs | Habitat: Alpine Desert

A short but critical hike to base camp. Barafu is a chaotic sea of tents, buzzing with summit anticipation. It’s windy, noisy, and hard to rest. If possible, bring earplugs or even a mild sleep aid like melatonin. This is the calm before the storm, the last chance to rest before summit night.

Day 6: Barafu Camp → Uhuru Peak → Upper Camp

• Elevation: 15,331 ft → 19,341 ft → 10,065 ft

• Distance: 14 km | Time: 13–14 hrs | Habitat: Arctic

Summit day. The hardest, longest, and most rewarding day of them all. We woke around 10:00 pm, layered up (6 layers on top, 4 on bottom), and started walking by 11:45PM. Sleep-deprived, cold, and exhausted, we shuffled up slowly by headlamp. The water bladder pipes freeze up at this altitude. Bring 2 Nalgene bottles and keep them upside down so the bottom freezes, and you will still have water to drink from the top.

By 5 am, we paused for coffee and snacks, watching the sunrise above the clouds, one of the most breathtaking moments of my life.

The moment that truly struck all of us was when we reached the so-called 'Point of No Return.' This is the spot where, once you arrive, the summit is considered within reach, or at least that’s what it’s known for. Emotions ran high: tears of joy, high-fives, and an overwhelming sense of excitement swept through the group. With that came a renewed surge of energy, fueling our final push toward the peak.

The hike from the point of no return to the first peak (Stella Point) was very tough. The ascent was too steep, but it's doable. Breathe slow and walk slow. Drink water. And that's how we made it. At Stella Point

From there, fatigue hit hard, but we pushed to Stella Point, where emotions overflowed. Tears, hugs, high-fives, we knew the summit was within reach.

An hour and a half later, we reached Uhuru Peak, the highest point in Africa. Flags came out, India, US, Texas A&M. Photos were taken, but more importantly, we soaked in the pride of what we had achieved.

The descent back to Barafu Camp, and then another 2 hours of trek (After a short break) to Upper Camp was brutal on the knees. Knee braces were lifesavers. After nearly 14 hours on our feet, we collapsed into camp, utterly drained but glowing with pride.

Day 7: Upper Camp→Mweka Camp → Mweka Gate

• Elevation: 10,065 ft → 5,380 ft

• Distance: 10 km | Time: 3–4 hrs | Habitat: Rainforest

The final stretch was wet, muddy rainforest again. By now, the excitement of finishing overshadowed the fatigue. For $2, we even had our muddy shoes and gaiters scrubbed clean, a small but satisfying luxury.

After that, you go to the camp office to wait for your summit certificates, where they also confirm your details. The office has clean toilets and a souvenir shop, but prices are high, better to buy souvenirs outside. Most hiking agencies also arrange lunch afterward. For us, our chef prepared a wonderful meal, and we celebrated with Kilimanjaro beer. There’s also a larger souvenir shop nearby that’s worth browsing.

Back at the hotel, all the guides, porters, and staff gathered for the tipping ceremony. Typically, tips amount to around 22% of the overall trek cost. The team will give you a list of names and suggested amounts by role (guides, porters, chef, etc.). Be sure your main guide receives the highest. Carry plenty of envelopes and small bills (singles, fives, tens, twenties, avoid hundreds). You’ll write each person’s name on an envelope, put in the money, and hand it over one by one during a ceremony with singing and dancing. They truly appreciate the personal touch. Set aside one to two hours the night before to get everything organized.

Once the ceremony was done, we finally enjoyed hot showers at the hotel. Later, our whole group met at the bar to celebrate, sharing stories, photos, drinks, and dinner. We even bought matching t-shirts and took some fun group pictures before calling it a night.

Post-Hike Day

Once the trek ended, we headed to Arusha for a day of relaxation. The Maasai market was full of souvenirs, and the coffee shops offered some of the best brews I’ve ever had. One critical tip: don’t book your return flight too early. Give yourself at least a full day after the trek to recover, wander, and shop.

We also settled expenses with Splitwise and created a shared photo album. Between all of us, we had over 2,000 photos, a treasure trove of memories that captured every moment, from rain-soaked trails to summit smiles.

Final Reflections

Kilimanjaro is not just a hike. It is a test of resilience, preparation, and teamwork. Every decision, from the trekking company you choose to the strength training you commit to shapes your experience.

Standing at Uhuru Peak, I felt pride, gratitude, and joy in equal measure. Pride in summiting, gratitude for the team that carried us, and joy in sharing the journey with new friends.

If you’re dreaming of Kilimanjaro, take the first step. Commit, prepare, and let the mountain teach you just how much you’re capable of.

Often times you see a lot of companies focus on this as an after thought. The fundamental principle with CI/CD would be to help any organziation to innovate faster and deliver functionalities faster to your customers. Delivering something faster to your customers should be a great incentive for any organization to do CI/CD.

CI and CD areas have matured a lot over the last few years. For someone who relies on cloud providers there are a lot of services available which will make your journey for implmentaion very easy.

The organization maturity level is decided by where they stand with the 3 key concepts below:

Continuous Integration

Breaking a build should be a sin for any developer :-).

Getting your developers to understand this should be engrained in your tech culture. When there are distributed teams of developers working across the globe its very important to make sure that you have a stable codebase which runs all the time. Test Driven Development(TDD) is a debatable topic. However, having no automated tests is asking for disaster. There are many types of automated tests, talking about them is a topic for another day. Having your microservices repositories plugged into a CI server and run tests and make sure that it maintains a stable branch is fundamental ask of any CI.

Continuous Deployment

Many in the industry believe that getting code into production in an automated way constitues continous deployment. However, due to many regulatory needs for checks and balances usually CD is done till the staging environment and then usually a push button deployment to production.

I strongly belive that continous deployment is a great way to streamline your development lifecycle whether it being to staging environement or production environment.

Continuous Delivery

There is a strong need to having checks and balances at each stage to make sure that whatever the developers are commiting and pushing down in the pipeline is effective, defect free and most importantly of all doesn’t break any existing features. CD^ ensures that with multiple levels of unit test, integration test, performance test and acceptance tests this whole process is streamlined and in the end can be done without fear of not breaking anything that currently exsists and also to make sure that the new features are delivered according to your acceptance tests.

The area where I think of CD^ differently is that Continuous Delivery should also make sure that there is value to an end user in what we are delivering. It can be a bug fix, new feature or performance improvement.

There are many tools available that can be levereaged to enable the CI,CD & CD^ effectively. Some of them that I feel worth while to review are below:

• Github and Bitbucket to some extent mercurial is quite popular for version control management.

• AWS CodePipeline — CodePipeline builds, tests, and deploys your code every time there is a code change based on the release process models you define.

• AWS CodeDeploy — AWS CodePipeline is a continuous delivery service for fast and reliable application updates. CodePipeline builds, tests, and deploys your code every time there is a code change, based on the release process models you define.

• Heroku Code Pipeline and Review apps are a great feature if you haven’t tried it.

CD Tools and Options

• Cloud bees — Enterprise Jenkins and other tools

• Code Ship — Hosted Continuous Delivery Service.

• Circle CI — with the mission of building a state of the art Continuous Integration and Delivery platform for developers.

• Solano Labs — Solano Labs provides a blazingly fast solution for Continuous Integration and Deployment.

• Team City (Jet Brains) — TeamCity will make sure your software gets built, tested, and deployed, and will notify you on that the way you choose.

• Travis CI — Travis CI is a hosted continuous integration platform that enables open source and private projects on GitHub to continuously monitor build quality, shipping code directly to production after a successful build.

Configuration Management

• Ansible — radically simple IT automation platform that makes your applications and systems easier to deploy.

• Chef — A configuration management tool that enables users to write recipes that describe how the instances in their fleet are configured.

• Puppet — A configuration management system that allows you to define the state of your IT infrastructure, then automatically enforces the correct state.

• Salt — A fast, scalable and flexible systems management software for data center automation, cloud orchestration, server provisioning, configuration management and more.

Internally @intentwise we do use both AWS and Heroku. CircleCI is a great CI/CD tool which works well with both AWS and Heroku and well integrated with Github or Bitbucket. Some of the features that we use are Code Deploy, Heroku Code Pipeline and Review apps. We are in the process of using AWS Code Pipeline which will ease out Continous delivery concept.

Any thoughts on other tools that we should give a try?

At Intentwise, we provide SAAS software that helps with AMS Reporting, AMS Analytics, and AMS recommendations based on our machine learning based recommendation engine. The Intentwise AMS analytics and reporting tool will help maximize your PPC returns while optimizing spend. If you are interested in trying out the tool that supports Amazon’s AMS automation do sign up for a Trial.

Are you a startup?

Are you an enterprise?

Somewhere between a startup and an enterprise?

For a startup you are better off if you just start on cloud on day zero. There are numerous benefits that I would like to list out for this suggestion.

First I would like to list out few reasons that we have heard and come across while dealing with all sorts of companies.

I have financial information for which cloud is NOT suited

I have to strict regulations that I need to adhere to.

The cloud provider is my competitor

My Senior management doesnt believe in cloud

Cloud is NOT secure

Cloud is expensive

Cloud is NOT reliable.

Here are our reasons to go to cloud and what you get by going to cloud?

Faster innovation. Focus on what your core business should do rather than managing the infrastructure to run your business.

Cost Effectiveness– Pay for what you use vs Pay for what you buy and keep on buying.

Secure Cloud Providers — Cloud vendors stay up to date on the latest technology and devote more time and personnel to security than any smaller business can do.

We @intentwise take data security very seriously

Everything is https (including our website https://intentwise.com )

We work mainly with AWS. https://aws.amazon.com/security/. Amazon, has an incredible amount of resources to dedicate to IT security, much more so than companies with smaller budgets.

We work with partners who are certified in the areas of SOC2 and HIPAA

2 factor Authentication available for our customer facing tools.

Our data and our customer data is housed in a Data store which is bound by all security certifications.

Our applications always access the data through SSL and ssh tunnels.

The data is NOT accessible through other channels other than our applications.

Few areas to review if you are NOT using cloud

Do I have enough devops and IT resources to support our infrastructure?

Can I innovate faster in both our core business focused and non business focused areas(IT, Devops).

Can I expand globally without incurring huge costs and resources to manage our infrastructure?

Do I have enough redundancy and disaster recovery plan in place?

In the end its up to each of the business and technology leaders to strategize on the usage of cloud and cloud services. There are many large Billion $ companies which are built purely on public clouds and some which use hybrid cloud or private cloud. You will need to make more informed decision on what works for you and your company in the long run so that you dont get left behind.

At Intentwise, we provide SAAS software that helps with AMS Reporting, AMS Analytics, and AMS recommendations based on our machine learning based recommendation engine. The Intentwise AMS analytics and reporting tool will help maximize your PPC returns while optimizing spend. If you are interested in trying out the tool that supports Amazon’s AMS automation do sign up for a Trial.

We are building a new platform for which we feel that a solution like Redshift makes a great sense. So if we have to migrate some of our data into this new DB how do we go about it? There are 2 approaches

Use the standard approach of backup and restore with additional task of schema and data type management.

Use a provider who will support this migration and make your life a bit simpler but of course at a small price.

AWS DMS is a great service if you haven’t used it. Few of the features that it provides are of great help to businesses who love to not dirty their hands :-) for non-needed tasks.

1. Replication

2. Data streaming

3. Synchronization between the source and destination

Redshift which is a MPP DB mainly suited for Datawarehouse related large data processing is ideally suited if you need to handle data growing from a small single node to a multiple multi node cluster.

One of the neat features is that you can add or remove compute nodes to the cluster without any interruption to the service. This is fantastic as this enables you to handle your performance based on your traffic growth. Other key features which Redshift supports are you normal Admin activities such as backup, replication, monitoring on cloudwatch to name a few.

We highly recommend trying out AWS DMS as it can provide a great deal of stability, quality and performance for your DB migration related tasks.

At Intentwise, we provide SAAS software that helps with AMS Reporting, AMS Analytics, and AMS recommendations based on our machine learning based recommendation engine. The Intentwise AMS analytics and reporting tool will help maximize your PPC returns while optimizing spend. If you are interested in trying out the tool that supports Amazon’s AMS automation do sign up for a Trial.

I am extremely happy that I have been able to learn a lot of cool stuff and at the same time build some amazing things at Intentwise. We have been doing some amazing work in the digital marketing space and in the process having some fun playing with cool ML algorithms, anamoly detections and NLP in particular.

On the personal front I have started a new liking to Python and all the amazing things that we do with it. Be in using for data mining, API integrations, stats, visualisation, web scraping and so on. Rails is another area that we build with. Rails is not something new to me since I first started using Rails in 2006. The other things which I like are the core infrastructure of of AWS which helped us build a platform with CI and CD right from day one.

Using Serverless architecture(Which I prefer to call JIT servers instead) to build data pipelines and processing. We are just getting started and I can’t belive that its been a year.

Being an enterpreuner is not an easy journey, but to actually follow your passion of building stuff that matters is what makes it worth while.

Incident report on memory leak caused by Cloudflare parser bug
Last Friday, Tavis Ormandy from Google's Project Zero contacted Cloudflare to report a security problem with our edge…blog.cloudflare.com

Long story short we at Intentwise depend on few third party products which uses Cloudflare and also internally for our website we use Cloudflare and we have been assured by them that none of our data has been compromised. Here is an email excerpt received from cloudflare

In our review of these third party caches, we discovered data that had been exposed from approximately 150 of Cloudflare’s customers across our Free, Pro, Business, and Enterprise plans. We have reached out to these customers directly to provide them with a copy of the data that was exposed, help them understand its impact, and help them mitigate that impact.

Fortunately, your domain is not one of the domains where we have discovered exposed data in any third party caches. The bug has been patched so it is no longer leaking data.

We at Intentwise take security very seriously and have been constantly on the lookout to better protect our and our clients data.

Our third party products have taken extra precaution and have decided to invalidate all user sessions. This will require all users to re-authenticate and login to the app again. We apologize in advance for this inconvenience.

At Intentwise, we provide SAAS software that helps with AMS Reporting, AMS Analytics, and AMS recommendations based on our machine learning based recommendation engine. The Intentwise AMS analytics and reporting tool will help maximize your PPC returns while optimizing spend. If you are interested in trying out the tool that supports Amazon’s AMS automation do sign up for a Trial.

Managing time is a tough nut to crack. However, every successful leader has mastered this art and constantly improvises. Here are few things that I personally follow and have proved to be very effective. The same principles could be applied for your marketing needs.

The principle behind time management is a simple concept which believes in the fact that:

1. You own your time

2. Invest in your time

3. Carefully manage your investment which in turn is a reflection of your values and priorities.

At the start of the month you sit and get yourself ready for few things.

1. 3 Things to do in the current month (Monthly)

2. 3 Things to do in the current week (Weekly)

3. 3 Things to do today (Daily)

The list actually holds you to working through your priorities and gets the tasks structured and organized. Follow the priority of tasks based on the urgency and importance of the task.

Following GTD has its benefits to management of your time and tasks. We at Intentwise use Trello, TODOist and many other tools to get our tasks and time organzied. I personally used to use iprocrastinate a while ago but moved to using Trello to manage my time and tasks.

Good luck and share your thoughts and ideas on what works for you and what doesn’t try our approach of 3 things to see if it helps you manage time better.

At Intentwise, we provide marketing platform solutions to enable our clients to make more informed decisions on how to spend, where to spend and how to address a customers true Intent. Wanna reach out to our engineers to learn more or would love to work with us?

Bangalore, one of the worst traffic scenarios in India. It is a nightmare for people to run on the street. No proper roads, no street lights(In case you are a night runner) and of course people driving and walking all over the place. This really put me off from running. Eventually I got back in the game by running on a treadmill. Initially I thought it won’t last long but I have been at it for a while now and had done 2 10K 1 5K and training for a half in Oct 2016. So far I enjoy running and hope to keep at it as long as I can. Although miss terribly running on streets and in park districts with streams around :-)

Training

http://www.halhigdon.com/training/
https://www.mcmillanrunning.com/tips
http://lydiardfoundation.org

A good read on distance training https://www.angio.net/personal/run/hadd.pdf

I mainly follow Hal Higdon for all my runs. Although have been reading up on McMillan and planning to use this training for my next run.

When it comes to food this is what I follow

Before the run

During the run

After the run

Enzyme, glycogen synthase, that turns carbohydrates from your food into glycogen for storage in your muscles is most active immediately after exercise.

Day of Marathon

Glucose is the most basic form of carbohydrate or sugar. It is also our body’s “go to” source for energy during moderate and fast running. Glucose is stored as glycogen in our muscles and liver and the trained athlete can store enough glycogen to provide energy for roughly two hours of moderately intense activity like marathon racing.

Users

Used to manage the EC2 and other activities using IAM user account. Some of the key roles and users that could be created are

1. Developers

2. Dev-ops

3. Bill viewer

4. Bill Payment

5. Github or any 3rd party connections (Very important to create a separate one for each integration as this will help in maintaining the access and security stringent)

EC2

Choose wisely as to what location you would need for your server as this decides the latency and performance. With the free tier you have to end up using Amazon distribution of linux. However, for testing purpose this is good, unless you are very particular about the distribution of the OS.

Code Deploy

This service works really well with github so you can really enable CD using this service. The best way to get this is to commit a change to github which runs all the tests(TravisCI, Cadeship, Jenkins etc..) and then deploys the changes to EC2 using this service.

Cloud Trail

This service records AWS API calls for your account and delivers log files to you. The recorded information includes the identity of the API caller, the time of the API call, the source IP address of the API caller, the request parameters, and the response elements returned by the AWS service. This helps with monitoring your API usage and controlling it.

S3

Simple Storage Service(S3) is mainly used to store and retrieve data through the service. This is highly scalable and can expand as needed.

Redshift

This is the amazon version of a Data Warehouse. Almost all end up using this as it provides easy integration with other AWS services and also many vendors provide good integration with Redshift. If there are a lot of key values grabs, which wouldn’t make sense with a database like Redshift that doesn’t support indexes.

Note: There are numerous services available through AWS which would require a lot of uses cases to leverage it. One key thing to keep in mind is that with each use of services the costs increase. So planning and budgeting is really important to keep the costs under control.

Great article (Github vs bitbucket)

Bitbucket VS. GitHub: It's More Than Just Features | Takipi Blog
Let's go back to 2005 when Bitkeeper, host of the Linux kernel project back then, pulled the trigger and changed its…blog.takipi.com

Stash/Bitbucket is Git repository software. It provides a web interface. The starting page shows all the projects, on which the current user has access. The project page lists all the repositories belonging to the project.

Git Client(For people who prefer client to CLI)

• https://www.git-tower.com/

Setup User

1. git config — global user.name <name>

2. git config — global user.email <email>

3. git config — global — edit

Common Git commands

• git reset — hard — Remove/ignore local changes and then pull master to overwrite

• git status — Lets you know what is changed locally

• git stash pop — Do the merge, and than pull the stash. stashing acts as a stack, where you can push changes, and you pop them in reverse order

• git init — Transform the current directory into a repository

• git clone — copies an existing Git repository (Checkout)

• git add <dir> — Stage all changes in <directory> for the next commit

• git commit — commit command commits the staged snapshot to the project history.

• git log — git log command displays committed snapshots

• git checkout master — checkout command serves three distinct functions: checking out files, checking out commits, and checking out branches

HEAD — usually points to master or some other local branch. but when you check out a previous commit, HEAD no longer points to a branch — it points directly to a commit. This is called a “detached HEAD” state

• git revert or git reset — undo any undesired changes.

• git checkout a1e8fb5 hello.py — Without altering the existing state of your repository you can bring or change an individual file from a different branch

• git revert <commit> — Generate a new commit that undoes all of the changes introduced in <commit>, then apply it to the current branch. “safe” way to undo changes

• git reset — Reset the staging area to match the most recent commit

• git reset — hard — Reset the staging area and the working directory to match the most recent commit. In addition to unstaging changes, the — hard flag tells Git to overwrite all changes in the working directory

• git clean -n — removes untracked files from your working directory.

• git rebase <base> — Rebasing is the process of moving a branch to a new base commit

• git remote — List the remote connections you have to other repositories.

• git fetch -The git fetch command imports commits from a remote repository into your local repo.

• git push — Pushing is how you transfer commits from your local repository to a remote repo.

• git squash — can be used to squash unnecessary commits

• git pull origin — Get latest from master

Add a repository to Github

Adding an existing project to GitHub using the command line - User Documentation
Putting your existing work on GitHub can let you share and collaborate in lots of great ways. Warning: Never git add…help.github.com

• git init

• git add .

• git commit -m “rails repo creation for new website”

• git remote add origin git@github.com:<github username>/<repository name>.git

• git push -u origin master

create pull request — In their simplest form, pull requests are a mechanism for a developer to notify team members that they have completed a feature.

Reference

Learn Enough Git to Be Dangerous
An Introduction to Version Control with Gitwww.learnenough.com

Git - Book
The entire Pro Git book, written by Scott Chacon and Ben Straub and published by Apress, is available here. All content…git-scm.com

Setting up a repository | Atlassian Git Tutorial
Set up a repo: git init creates a new Git repo, git clone copies an existing Git repo and git config configures your…www.atlassian.com

Bitbucket | The Git solution for professional teams
Collaborate on code with inline comments and pull requests. Manage and share your Git repositories to build and ship…bitbucket.org

Key differences were

1. Functional Analysis vs Technical Analysis

2. Short term vs Long term

3. With tide surfing you can buy and sell the same stock many number of times :-) by timing the market

As I ventured into this I read a lot and compiled some information that is needed for Technical Analysis. Feel free to provide your feedback/advice or suggestions.

[slideshare id=56638438&doc=idiotsguidetostocks-160104064817]

What is CMS?

A Content Management System(CMS) is a software that helps us to manage content. Content can be in the form of text, images, movies, links or any data. When choosing a CMS, make sure that your team and developers are familiar with the programming language and the database that the CMS uses. This is very important as there will be a need to customise the backend to suit your needs. A CMS consists of 2 parts

1. CMA — Content Management Application — This application lets users to manage content that could be later integrated with your website.

2. CDA — Content Delivery Application — This application takes the information from CMA and publishes to the website.

I would like to break down the CMS overview and selection process into there categories

1. CMS can be categorised into Coupled or DeCoupled (Headless CMS)

A headless or Decoupled CMS works purely on an API basis. It usually provides a HTTP REST with JSON interface and it doesn’t care on how the content is displayed. This is very useful if you want to focus on your front end developers using the responsive or other RIA technologies to build websites that leverages better user interactions on your site. Another key area that leverages this CMS is Mobile Apps

Headless Frameworks

• Headless WordPress: WP plus JSON API plugin

• Headless Drupal 7; RESTful module or Drupal 7 + RESTful Web Services module

• Contentful, the API-first content management backend designed to be responsive (Paid)

• Inguenix (ASP.NET)

• Django Rest Framework wth Django Web Framework

• Prismic

• CloudCms (Paid)

• Builtio

• Cosmicjs

• Hippo CMS — offers contextual and behavioral trend analytics on web content and helps you create expriments to A/B test content and layout

• Osmek

• Genetics Mesh

• Directus (Open Source and Paid hosted version)

• ContentStack (built.io)

The traditional Coupled CMS are useful as it doesn’t require complex programming and relies heavily on the UI provided by the CMS to author the content by non programmers. One of the drawback of this CMS is that the front end developers are coupled with the CMS technology to make edits, and are restricted by leveraging RIA or other responsive technologies in a better fashion.

Traditional CMS Frameworks

1. LifeRay

2. OpenCMS

3. Alfresco community edition

4. Wordpress

5. Drupal

6. Joomla

7. Expression Engine (Paid)

8. Text Pattern

9. Contao

10. SilverStripe

11. Umbraco

12. Concrete5

13. CushyCMS (Paid)

14. Radiant CMS

15. Alfresco

2. Open-source vs Paid

This section is very clear. With the Paid version of CMS you get support by dedicated support folks and will guide you or help in the implementation and support. The open source on the other hand is widely used and has a good network of people working and supporting it.

3. Language framework that it supports

You have a few popular areas of technology platforms and database that it supports (MySQL, PostGres, SqlServer, Oracle etc…)

• PHP

• Java

• Ruby

• .NET

What are some of the key questions that needs to be considered before the selection process

1. The complexity of your content and how they interact with each other

2. How will your users interact with your content?

3. How many users are authoring the tool and do you need complex roles and responsibilities.

4. Do you need training and how do you plan on training your folks who use this CMS

5. Is there a Support Community for the CMS?

6. How much does it cost?

My Observation and Recommendations

When or why do we use Headless CMS?

• If you are planning on using Javascript MVC framework

• If you want content to be used across devices (mobile apps, tablet, desktop)

Here are my picks worth trying out and having a better chance of success.

Headless CMS

• Contentful — Paid

• Drupal with Headless API — Free

• ContentStack from built.io — Paid

• Hippo — Java based CMS

• Prismic.io — Paid

Traditional CMS

• Drupal — if you have a complex setup that needs PHP platform — Free

• Wordpress — If you simple website where Technical experience is not necessary — Free

• Alfresco if you need a java platform — Community edition is free or Paid version available too

Disclaimer: I used lot of the information available across the community to compile this together. I have listed some of those sites below

• https://support.rackspace.com/how-to/cms-comparison-drupal-joomla-and-wordpress/

• http://mediumrareinc.com/resources/what-cms-should-i-use/

• http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2011/10/top-10-content-management-systems

• http://www.artisteer.com/?p=nl_article3

• http://www.htmlgoodies.com/beyond/webmaster/toolbox/article.php/3887866/I-Want-To-Build-A-Website-Do-I-Need-a-Content-Management-System-CMS.htm

• https://www.contentful.com/r/knowledgebase/headless-and-decoupled-cms/

• http://gadgetopia.com/post/7206#sthash.bFRo35yN.dpuf

• http://cms-software-review.toptenreviews.com/#sthash.9XhbLhGr.dpuf

I bought by first DSLR in 2009 and have been using it since then. Here is what I use:

Nikon 18–55mm f3.5–5.6 Lens

Nikon 3100

Nikon 70–300mm Telephoto Lens

Nikon 55mm f1.4 Prime Lens

Before you begin I highly highly recommend attending a weekend course that covers the basics of buying, using and building a style of your photography. There are numerous classes that are being offered in Bangalore, I attended the class offered by Kalyan Varma. There are 3 reasons I chose him :-)

1. His SEO rankings are pretty good which happens only if you have a popular site
2. I read a blog about his class by Citizen Matters
3. Finally after checking out his work and photos I figured its a good place.

I had great time on both the days. The first day we focused more on technicality of taking photos along with buying guidelines while the second day was all about field day and post processing. We spent almost 3 hours at Lalbhag in the early hours of the Sunday taking pictures of anything and everything. I took almost 200 pictures and in the end I had 3 that I could showcase well :-). There were a lot of things that I picked up in the class which otherwise I hadn’t paid too much attention to.

Here are a few of my key take aways.

Some guidelines for buying

micro 4/3

Here are some photos from the class exercise, which was to catch the essence of Kempegowda tower at Lalbhag

Disclaimer: I am NOT a professional photographer nor I claim to be a great photographer. I do this as a hobby and to fulfill my constant quest of learning new things.

After the decision to not continue with our labs site I then led the core business layer team which had some great developers and engineers. It was a time where we moved from horizontal to vertical to not so vertical organization. During this phase of early 2009 I also got involved in our Agile in the Large rollout, Became one of the key people who pushed for and evangelized and rolled out of the AIL within our entire organization. It was fun as we had been using agile in multiple smaller teams since 2006 and to really roll it out across all the teams didn’t come very easy but in the end the results were fantastic. During 2009 came our next reorg where in I chose the work on Air and the next 1.5 years it was a roller coaster. According to me Air is probably the most complex product within the travel space. The combination of airline business complexities, older technologies among GDS and airlines it always keeps us on our toes. To top this off during that time we probably had around 2 or 3 major airline mergers which caused us more headaches. During this time we also had some really cool technology buildout within our air space.

Mid 2010 was another turning point in my career as I chose to move out of technology/app development space into Data space. This was the early days of us using Hadoop and other cool ML technologies. I joined as the BI leader to head our Web Analytics and Data infrastructure space. My involvement in using Hadoop to build out our EDW infrastructure and to leverage data for analytics in the space of Marketing, CRM, Finance and other site optimization space was very rewarding and satisfying. The rollout of our Data Infrastructure build out and the outcomes were great.

Early 2012 was another turning point in my career. I decided to move back to India and during these days were also talks of opening an Orbitz office outside US. It worked out in a way for both Orbitz and I that we started an office in Bangalore India. The early days were very stressful as during the day I was working towards the whole nine yards of setting up the office (space, registration, bank, finance, accounting, HR etc..) and during nights would continue to work with my teams in Chicago which I was still managing. The next 10 months gave me an opportunity to understand in detail what it really takes to run an office in India and got me exposed to functions such as Finance, Accounting, HR, Payroll, recruiting, Tax, Audit, facilities, vendors, procurement etc… Its not every day you get an opportunity such as this so I was very thankful for it. Early 2013 we were all setup and ready to hire. I was initially able to build a good team of developers and started working with them to help support our international brands. Slowly success led to build out of other teams. After almost a year we hired some really fantastic leaders within the India office and of course HR. For me spending time with both Data and non data teams and helping build a great culture was a good challenge and in the end we all worked together to successfully build a great team and a fantastic office. I owe the success of this office to the Orbitz india leadership team, CTO and other leaders from Chicago. All in all every single employee from the Bangalore office worked towards the success and got involved in every aspect of the office be it culture, hiring, facilities or any other matter. Few of the activities which we all are very proud of and also participate and have fun are Biking outings, Board game nights, CSR activities, Foosball, Xbox, College recruiting, Pot lucks and of course the latest edition “Poker Nights” :-). We also had some really good speakers come over for our hosted Analytics Thursday or other Light House talks which focuses on technology related or any general interesting topics.

As all good things come to a turning point. We are waiting to see if things continue the same way or else maybe things get better. Only time will tell.

This is to wishing all the folks good luck, give in your heart and the best will come out. I will also leave you with a good quote I came across long time ago.

“Sweat during Peace so you don’t Bleed in War” — Anonymous

In 2010 I moved away from hosting at home and started using Blue Host for all my websites. In total I was hosting around 6 websites. Bluehost provided me with the platform where I didn’t have to manage any infrastructure and also provided lot of easy ways to maintain and install both Wordpress and gallery. I was happy with it until I started getting bored and wanted to start doing things by myself and hence Amazon and AWS.

AWS is not something new and has been around for a while. Amazon is giving 1 year free and you can leverage a lot of the tools that are available. Some of the tools that I have used so far

1. EC2 instance — Setup a Amazon version of linux and setup all the softwares that are needed (PHP, Python, VSFTP, rails, MySQL). Setting up an instance is so easy that the entire process will take you not more than couple hours(including the software installation). Yum package manager lets you install things without much hassle.

2. Amazon RDS — Relational DB service. This service lets you pick any DB. MySQL is the one which is needed for all the tools that I run. Your EC2 instance can connect seamlessly into the RDS service.

3. Amazon CloudFront — CDN required to make your website fast and also very efficient in delivering static content. Also with Wordpress I have used W3-Total Cache which works pretty great.

Within a week I was up and running one of my website on AWS cloud. I realised that the cost can mount of to a hefty price if you are running just one website and also using more services means more money. So far I really enjoyed AWS as that has provided a cool way to build your infrastructure.

So how do you define culture? It’s a great question and something that I have pondered over. In the end I feel that there are certain core set of values that each organisation believes in and that defines their culture.

I guess every leader eventually figures out as to what really works for them. For me the 2 key take always were

• P/PC balance. production and Production capability. To really achieve the effectiveness of production you need to understand the ability that produces this effectiveness.

• Focus on the right things. The order in which you look at things matter the most.

1. Important and urgent

2. Important and non urgent

3. Urgent and non important

4. Non urgent and non important

[amazon template=thumbnail&asin=8129111373]

Couple things that I felt were good insights.

1. There are couple emotions that determine the shopping pattern: The fundamental ones are greed, altruism, fear and envy.
2. Women have always provided the best insights and inputs on building retail business
3. The key to being a successful entrepreneur is having an ability to innovate and an ability to execute those innovations.
4. There are 3 kinds of entrepreneurs Creators, Preservers and Destroyers.

Very important aspect of entrepreneurship is to separate the ownership, governance and execution. No two people are equal, everyone has their strengths and weaknesses. Identify them and work around those. Kishore says “Everyone is here on earth to kill time. Everyone picks some activity that they like doing and calls it profession”

A good book recommendation that I got from this is “7 habits of highly effective people”.

Here was the first event.

[embed]http://www.meetup.com/Analytics-Thursday/events/207840632/[/embed]

Seby talked about how started and grew his organisation Nabler from 2006 to till date where serves numerous customers. His passion for analytics and servicing marketing needs was good to hear.

We are in the process of starting our next event in Jan trying to get a bit more technical this time. Join to group hear more and learn form the industry experts.

PigLatin which is the language used to express the data flows can run in two modes Local within a JVM and within the hadoop cluster. Like most of the other things under the hood it converts all pig scriptlets into a MapReduce program. The cool thing that comes out with pig is that it requires probably less than a dozen lines of code to process TB worth of data. However, the key thing that I noticed is that pig is good to analyze somewhat simple unstructured data. When it comes to complex weblogs or unstructured Social data then things get hairy. I might not be exposed to all features of Pig but I feel like its a great tool when u have data sets that are not too complex to analyze.

While I have been interviewing folks in the Hadoop space for couple years now what I realized is that its very easy for BI professionals to transition into Hadoop area with HIVE and PIG. Its more like SQL and gets you into the Hadoop/Big Data area. However, the true analysis of big data comes with experience in programming, analytical background, statistics and Machine Learning.

For anyone who would like to get into the Hadoop space the quick entry is to start using PIG and HIVE however, if you want to proress any further please be aware that these 2 will probably get you to only so far.