About

My name is Prashanth Madi. I’m a programmer and Tech enthusiast. I work out of my office in Dallas,TX for the OpenSource Support Team at Microsoft, but this blog, its content and opinions are my own. I blog about technology, culture, gadgets, diversity, code, the web, where we’re going and where we’ve been. I’m excited about community, social equity, media, entrepreneurship and above all, the open web.

Books

Career Success :

The New One Minute Manager Link
- Helped me understand how to work with managers and set expectations up-front.
Who Moved My cheese Link
- Nothing is constant and things would change all the time. This little book helped me understand how to manage changes at work.
The Amazon Way: 14 Leadership Principles Behind the World’s Most Disruptive Company Link
- I would highly recommend this for anyone who is just getting started with career. Talks about work culture in Amazon and how they achieve high performance. I have already learn’t most of these Principles with experience but reading earlier in career would have been more helpful.

Recommended books that i haven’t read yet..

The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon Link

Video’s

Here are some Great Video’s I came across in my life. I thought they are worth sharing and might help someone starting fresh.

General great advice on life:

The Last Lecture, by Randy Pausch, its Oprah Show Reprise, and its related media coverage, 2007.
Time Management by Randy Pausch and its Powerpoint slides, 2007.
The Internet’s Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz

Computer Science

Courses I liked in coursera.org:

History

A History of the World since 1300 Probably the Best Course i took but its no longer available on Coursera
The Modern World, Part Two: Global History since 1910 It may sound little boring in start but turns out to be good as we progress. Author provides an overview of both the world wars and their outcomes, Cold War situation and Modern world.
The Modern World, Part One: Global History from 1760 to 1910 I haven’t been through this yet but seems like good candidate for the list.
The Emergence of the Modern Middle East - Part I This Course will discuss the emergence of the modern Middle East from the fall of the Ottoman Empire, at the end of the First World War to the present.

Programming

Functional Programming in Scala Specialization Think this as a fresh air out of your day to day programming life. I was mesmerized by course content and it gave me new thinking of how i look at an issue.
Programming for Everybody (Getting Started with Python) A good course for someone trying to learn python. Here is a better Python Tutorial from Google - Link