Vivek Thangaswamy, Awards for Professionalism: Professional Excellence and Innovation Award Recipient

This week, Stephen Ibaraki has an exclusive interview with Vivek Thangaswamy.

Professional Excellence and Innovation Award honors the network computing professional who has made the most effective combination of the ideals of professionalism and the innovative use of networking technology and/or products for a particular networking project and is awarded in several different categories.

Professional Excellence and Innovation Award: Corporate Small Business winner, Vivek Thangaswamy is currently a Senior SharePoint and .NET Solution Architect for TCS in India. He has extensive experience as an IT professional that began with a Bachelor's Degree in Information Technology and Management of Business Administration in Finance. Vivek has authored VSTO 3.0 for Office 2007 Programming, Packt Publishing and co-authored System Analysis and Design, Lambert Academic Publishing. He has been awarded Microsoft's Most Valuable Professional (MVP) in SharePoint in 2008 and 2009 and in ASP.NET in 2007. Presently working for Australia's prestigious airlines, Qantas; he has also done development work for DWP on a United Kingdom government project. Awarded 3 Gold rings for best academic performance, Vivek's certifications include MCP, MCAD, MCSD, MSPD-EA II and BrainBench Certification in ASP.NET, C#, SharePoint 2003 and Experts Exchange master certified in XML.

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA – May 11, 2011. The Network Professional Association® (NPA), in conjunction with Interop, Microsoft, GITCA, Cisco Press and Agile IT, announce four individuals as winners of the tenth annual Awards for Professionalism. The international contest for the Awards for Professionalism honors individuals working as network computing professionals. Selection is based on meeting the ideals of the Network Professional Association, the advocate for the network computing professional. Read the story at  www.AwardsforProfessionalism.org.

The latest blog on the interview can be found in the IT Managers Connection (IMC) forum where you can provide your comments in an interactive dialogue.
http://blogs.technet.com/b/cdnitmanagers/

DISCUSSION:

Q:		Vivek, you have a remarkable history of considerable achievements. Congratulations on receiving the Award for Professionalism, Professional Excellence and Innovation. Moreover, thank you for sharing your deep experiences and insights with our audience. A:  It has been a great honor and pleasure to receive the award from NPA.org. It was the most delighted moment in my life and it encourages me to do more than what I do now. Thank you all for recognizing the level of achievements I do in the industry. I have been in this industry for more than seven years now; the first thing I learned in my career is sharing of knowledge is the first step to find innovating and inspiring ideas.
Q:		What do you believe was the catalyst in receiving the Professional Excellence and Innovation Award? A:  Receiving the Professional Excellence Award is for our commitment to developing the way the work can show its excellence. This award is a result of the dedication and contributions made in many parts of my work involved in implementing programs and the professional engineering in the system. My regular community activity and knowledge sharing in many ways like writing books, articles, blogs and technical presentations are leading to this excellence award.
Q:		How did it feel to win this award? A:  Amazing and delighted. First time in my life I feel something special and I made my family and friends proud of me.
Q:		What was the reaction from your friends and family in receiving this award? A:  Everyone is delighted and speechless. I am getting wishes and support from everywhere. It was a great moment.
Q:		How will you leverage the recognition? A:  This award brings me increase in recognition, publicity, and success to my career growth.
Q:		How would you describe your top innovative achievements in terms of the problems you were trying to solve, your solutions, and the impact they have today and into the future? A:  I believe the reason I got through it all was sheer determination. As an employee I have designed a tool to migrate notes application data to the SharePoint environment. Which was the most challenging problem I find solution; it was a great impact in data migration projects in previous organization.
Q:		Why are computers one of your passions and what ignited this passion? A:  I would like to become a sports person. But my family circumstance leads me to look for a hot job with good earnings in market and I find computers. I said to myself "don't limit yourself; many people limit themselves to what they think they can do. You can go as far as your mind lets you. What you believe, remember, you can achieve".
Q:		You have this strong background in working as an author and developer. Can you quickly profile this history and notable achievements? A:  I'm a big believer in growth. Life is not about achievement, it's about learning and growth, and developing qualities like compassion, patience, perseverance, love, and joy and so forth. And so if that is the case, then I think our goals should include something which stretches us. Writing is my passion; from my school days I use to write poems in Tamil language. And this leads to Author status now.
Q:		Can you profile your current job roles and valuable lessons you wish to share from each role that will benefit the audience? A:  When your developer thinks about 1000 possibilities of failure that can happen, this leads to the one successful solution with the best learning experience. When you're leading the team, you should be patient enough to listen to everyone and smart enough to absorb and self-realize everyone's thoughts. Presently, I am working as a Solution Architect and leading project technical activities.
Q:		What are your future career aspirations? What are you most passionate about? A:  Career aspirations, I've always wanted to manage and run a huge team and show this world what Vivek is capable of. I am always passionate about writing and have an interest in photography.
Q:		Please share your current volunteer roles, why you serve, what value is being created by these organizations, why you recommend others to serve? A:  I am part of an OpenAjax alliance to help and improve the open source community. I always contribute to CodePlex.com – it serves for Microsoft technology open source tools and solutions. Apart from technology, I am supporting orphanage and heritage buildings recovery in India.
Q:		Can you profile your certifications and the value they hold for you? A:   Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (SharePoint) – 2009, 2008 Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (ASP.NET) - 2007 MCP, MCSD, MCPD-EA Upgrade II BrainBench Certified in ASP.NET, C#, SharePoint 2003 Experts-Exchange Certified Master in SharePoint, ASP.NET, XML All these certifications and recognitions always showed me standing tall among the crowd. All have added great value to my profile.
Q:		Has your education helped your career? A:  Yes. Of course, my under graduate B.Tech helped me a lot and I am always proud I did my graduation at the University of Madras.
Q:		From your experiences, what tips would you provide to those who want to excel in their careers as IT professionals to help them in their journey? A:  Be patient, adaptive, aggressive and straight forward. In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment.
Q:		What are your tips, lessons, and best resources for those wanting a career in computing? A:  Learning and exploring are two key activities for any individual pursuing a career in the computer industry. Every two years technology will get upgraded or new technology is born to kill the existing one. So quick learners and with fast and aggressive technology exploration will grow faster.
Q:		Provide your predictions of future IT trends and their implications/opportunities? A:  My prediction is the world's top four companies Microsoft, Oracle, Google and Apple are almost monopolizing there corresponding segment of business. I don't find any aggressive competitive companies to conquer these giants business area.
Q:		Please share 3 stories (something surprising, unexpected, amazing, or humorous) from your studies, work, or time with volunteer organizations? A:  We're in college, third year. After completing our electronic lab we were about to go to movie theatre to watch some movie. We're 6 people leaving from our college using the local bus service. We need to change buses twice to reach the theatre. All we had was 300 INR – it is almost perfect for movie tickets and travel expenses. In addition to the 300 INR, we also had some change (around 30 INR). The bus was crowded, so 5 of us got into the bus using the front door, and I alone got in the back door of the bus. We told the driver to take tickets for 6 using that 30 INR. Here is the twist – the 30 INR was 2x10 and 2x5. But one 5 INR was a new coin and it caught my friend's attention, so he kept that in his pocket and paid only for 5 people. After 5 minutes the ticket checking officer came and found we had only 5 valid tickets, so he took our 300 INR as a penalty. All our plans had been spoiled. Later the next day when the guy came to college he showed us that 5 INR and said at huge risk I saved this guy.
Q:		If you were doing this interview, what 3 questions would you ask and then what would be your answers? A:   Q1: How will you uncover the importance of this award for the IT profession? A1: Will try to publish this news in the awardees national newspaper. This will expose in a great way about this organization. Q2: Is there any way to increase the involvement of the IT professional in global innovative activity? A2: Send a personalized letter to the CEO of awardees current organization about their employee's achievement, which will expose the NPA.Org among huge numbers of IT professionals. For example my present company has 1.5+ lakh employees. Q3: How can we improve the standard of networking professionals? A1: We can build international standards for the networking professional's education, knowledge and skills and propose to the student community.
Q:		As a prominent developer, author and leader, what were your greatest challenges and how did you overcome them? A:  The price of greatness is responsibility, leadership is all about responsibility. Well, when you're trying to create things that are new, you have to be prepared to be on the edge of the new level. Authors can create new things, which has its own greatness. Fast is fine, but accuracy is everything; for every developer speed and accuracy are key to their success. Developer, author, and leader all have their own greatness to achieve.
Q:		What do you see as the three top challenges facing us today and how do you propose they be solved? A:  Integrity among technologies; some standard should be formed to organize and integrate the different technologies in a more standardized manner. Resource qualities; most of the resources are not coming in interest with computer; they just came to earn. So many of them lack self-realization of the work they have to do. Solution should be redefined; targeting solution in any reach is mostly achieved. But it lacks the standards and resource required.
Q:		Please provide your views on the on professionalizing the profession such as offered by the NPA or IP3. [http://www.cnp.org/ and http://www.IPThree.org] A:  It was a really good idea and well started. My suggestion is to collaborate or partner with aggressive well organized startup companies to vision great future for the organization.
Q:		Vivek, with your demanding schedule, we are indeed fortunate to have you come in to do this interview. Thank you for sharing your substantial wisdom with our audience. A:  It was a pleasure to be in dialogue with Stephen Ibaraki and NPA.org members. I will do my support and show my excellence to help NPA.org in any possible way I can. All the best and cheers.