blogging on S Anand

What I don't post on LinkedIn

Sat, 06 Jun 2026 11:55:10 +0530

I don’t post all my writing on LinkedIn. For example:

Fewer strategy posts, e.g. “Where Enterprise AI is Headed”, “How My Innovation Team Works”, etc. aren’t on LinkedIn.
Fewer developer posts, e.g. my AGENTS.md, my SKILL.md files files, CLI tools, evals, etc. aren’t on LinkedIn.

I also shorten content because of LinkedIn constraints. For example:

No links, e.g. the list of all my AI-in-education resources
Short content, e.g. my full advice for teams using AI is much longer than the LinkedIn post.
Trimmed prompts, e.g. how to convert meeting transcripts into a personalized org-consulting report
Snipped chats, e.g. the full moves of GPT-5.5 playing chess

I filter the LinkedIn posts, sharing what’s most useful for most people.

But some people asked if I can share the full content over email.

So, I’ve set up my full blog, by email (free, via Google Groups): https://groups.google.com/g/s-anand

Preview before you subscribe. Switch to weekly digest if it’s too much.

LinkedIn is hostile to content

Mon, 19 Jan 2026 18:39:33 +0530

It’s incredible how hostile LinkedIn is for reading / writing content.

Posts containing links to external websites (like my blog) get significantly less reach. That’s why you see links in comments, not the post!
You can’t copy content from posts on their mobile app. You can’t even easily select the entire article on the web app! Selecting a part, and then shift-clicking elsewhere (which works almost everywhere) doesn’t work.
Also, the copied text isn’t clean. It’s filled with hidden text (e.g. “Skip to search”), duplicated text (e.g. author name repeated), and other junk.
It’s hard to export content. For example, the export feature does not include the original links in your articles, nor the links to images you posted!
It’s hard to scrape content. LinkedIn actively tries to prevent scraping, and their TOS prohibits it.
No formatting. You have to embed unicode characters.
Search is terrible. You can’t search for posts by keyword, date, or author easily.
No public posting - so you need to log in to read anything.

The only reason I’m on LinkedIn is because of the network. My current approach is:

Write on my blog: https://www.s-anand.net/
Copy paste on LinkedIn, formatted
Link to the original, and to hell with the reach

Over time, … let’s see.

A challenge of blog questions

Tue, 04 Mar 2025 11:13:55 +0000

Thejesh tagged me with these questions.

Why did you start blogging in the first place?

I started my website in 1997 on Geocities at https://www.geocities.com/root_node/, mostly talking about me. (A cousin once told me, “Anand’s site is like TN Seshan - talking only about himself.” 🙂)

(As an aside, I didn’t know that searching for Geocities on Google renders the results in Comic Sans!)

I wanted a place to share the interesting links I found. Robot Wisdom by John Barger and Scripting News by Dave Winer were great examples: collection of interesting links updated daily.

In July 1999, as a student at IIMB, I decided to put that into action by creating a custom HTML page updated manually.

What platform are you using to manage your blog and why did you choose it? Have you blogged on other platforms before?

WordPress. Because it was the most fully-featured, mature platform when I migrated to it around 2006.

Before that, I used:

A custom HTML page on Geocities. But it was hard to update multiple links, create individual pages, categories, etc. So…
A Perl-based static-site generator I wrote myself. But as my link count grew, each generation took too long. So …
A CGI-Perl-based blogging engine I hosed on freestarthost.com, handling commenting, etc. But at BCG, I didn’t have time to add many features (linkback, RSS, etc.) So…
Blogger as a parallel blog, briefly. But it didn’t have as many features as (nor the portability of) WordPress. So…
WordPress - moving across a bunch of hosting services, and currently on HostGator.
I also blogged in parallel on InfyBlog, Infosys’ internal blogging platform on LiveJournal.

How do you write your posts? For example, in a local editing tool, or in a panel/dashboard that’s part of your blog?

I started with custom HTML in Emacs (or whatever code editor I kept moving to).

Briefly, I used Windows Live Writer, which was quite a good blogging tool.

Now, I write in Markdown on VS Code and paste it into WordPress’ editor.

When do you feel most inspired to write?

When an idea that’s been bubbling for a while in my mind bursts out.

Do you publish immediately after writing, or do you let it simmer a bit as a draft?

I publish immediately.

What’s your favorite post on your blog?

The next chapter of my life, which I wrote on a one-way flight back from the UK to India to start Gramener.

Any future plans for your blog? Maybe a redesign, a move to another platform, or adding a new feature?

I plan to move it to GitHub Pages with Markdown content and a static site generator. I might write my own SSG again in Deno or use one of the faster ones.

Who’s next?

I’d love to hear from

Why I’m blogging less

Sat, 26 Apr 2014 13:39:51 +0000

My blog’s been through a number of phases. Between 1996 – 1999, it was just a website with a few facts about my and some of my juvenile ramblings. Inspired by robotwisdom.com, I converted it into a blog – except that I didn’t know what blogging was and just called it “updating my site every day.” It was mostly a link blog.

In 2006, around the time when I moved from Mumbai to London, I reduced my link-blogging and started writing longer articles talking about my experiences. This was a fairly productive phase, and I was churning a few dozen articles every year until 2012.

In the UK, I didn’t know many people, and wasn’t comfortable going out of the way to interact. My blog was the primary means of sharing my thoughts and work.

In 2012, when I moved back to India, that changed. I started speaking at various events. (Some of my talks are recorded.) I’ve been speaking at one or two events every month, which is roughly the volume of blogging I was doing since 2006.

So, effectively, my output medium has changed. Instead of writing, I speak. Correspondingly, my blogging has come down.

How does it feel? Well, on the one hand, there’s a lot more direct feedback when you’re speaking to an audience. You can interact with them, ask questions – all of which I can do on a blog as well, but this is real-time. When my audience laughs, I steer my talk more towards funny insights. When my audience claps, I steer it towards more impressive techniques. When my audience reacts like dead fish, I switch to Q&A. When my audience is lost in their own conversation, I terminate the talk early.

Effectively, my content is often shaped in real time. And that can be (usually) an exhilarating experience. I used to worry that the talks didn’t have the permanence of blog posts. But like I said, many of them are recorded. I also worried that the audience response would not be permanent, like blog comments. But Twitter fills that void.

For example, yesterday, I was speaking at the Great Indian Developer Summit. Here are the tweets going out as I was speaking.

Kashinath Pai. P.: #GIDS visualising data by Anand »

Naresha: Looking forward for a cool ‘Visualizing Big Data’ presentation from @sanand0 #gids »

ARAVIND CHEKKALURE: #gids watg for a solution in visualizating bigdata..woww »

Raj: Analysis of big data and visualization of big data is very different #gids »

Sundarraj Kaushik: Now to visualize data with Anand at #gids »

Raj: Anand’s session on visualization of big data surly interesting talk of day. I attended previously #gids »

UK Gupta: Another Excitin &Interestin Session “Leveraging #Cloud Services2Build & Integrate Analytics in Ur #IoT Solutions” by @Ragural #IntelDZ #gids »

Siva Narayanan: Doordarshi party is the worst loser in Indian politics #gids »

Siva Narayanan: Very cool viz about Indian Elections from gramener #gids »

ARAVIND CHEKKALURE: Examples for visualiztion that anad took is rally imprazv #gids »

Siva Narayanan: Margin of victory for winner isn’t affected by number of candidates. Affects runner up. #gids »

Goutham G: Enjoyed every bit of information on xls by vinod #GIDS »

Sanaulla: Very interesting facts and presentation by s anand in visualizing big data #gids »

THIYAGARAJAN.R: #gids Hi everyone, Anand session on Data visualization is interesting… happening on Main Hall »

Sanaulla: Visualization helps grasp huge amount of data quite easily #gids »

Vignesh Rajendran: Sanand might be called @NateSilver538 of Indian politics analysis #gids »

45hw1nk5: By far the beat talk so far, visualising data by S Anand from Gramener. #gids »

Rahul Sharma: On the Everest of knowledge with S Anand.. Courtesy - ‘Big Data’ :D #gids »

Sundarraj Kaushik: A very pertinent subject visualization of election statistics at #gids. »

Siva Narayanan: UdayKumar has 1600 cases against him #gids »

Rishi Raj Srivastav: Great Indian politics (data) visualization by Anand. #GIDS »

Siva Narayanan: Singh has been most popular last name in Indian elections every time #gids »

ARAVIND CHEKKALURE: Big data visualization is this much easy..like anand speks #gids »

Sundarraj Kaushik: A very colourful presentation without actual mention of big data or visualization. Wonderful presentation at #gids. »

Govind Kanshi: Gujarat, Maharashtra have longest names fighting in elections #gids powerful story as usual by @sanand0 »

Venkat ramanan v: Data visualization at it’s best. #gids »

Kamlesh ®: RT @govindk: Gujarat, Maharashtra have longest names fighting in elections #gids powerful story as usual by @sanand0 »

brntbeer: Talk about last names and regions of India. I’m definitely an outsider! #gids »

Sundarraj Kaushik: Is the dropout of girls the cause of better results of girls. Anand at #gids »

Sanaulla: Best session of the day: visualizing big data #gids »

ujwala: Visualizing big data session is very very interesting. Nicely done. #gids »

Siva Narayanan: Sun sign has a big impact on exam performance #gids »

Venkat ramanan v: Intriguing session on visualization #gids http://t.co/sezeRP48BM »

Siva Narayanan: Almost nobody is born in august in India! #gids People are fudging birth dates. »

Raj: Thanks #saltmartch for invite such a good speaker. #gids »

ujwala: RT @K2_181: Almost nobody is born in august in India! #gids People are fudging birth dates. »

Vinod Srinivas: @greatindiandev #gids #Anand was at his best in his session on #Visualisation »

Kiran Bhat: Lets get people to SEE data #Gramener #gids »

Sonali Patnaik: #GIDS “lets get people to see data” good session @sanand »

Amol Khanapurkar: Easily the best session at #gids for me by S Anand from http://t.co/1lVuBMpPlW »

isha jain: Amazing facts and awesome session on data visualization by Anand… #gids »

Kashinath Pai. P.: Absolutely mind blowing presentation by s anand #GIDS »

Sundarraj Kaushik: Thanks to Anand S for a marvellous and pertinent presentation at #gids 2014 »

Naresha: @sanand0 Those were amazing visualizations of data. One of the best sessions of #gids. »

Amol Khanapurkar: Data visualization can provide insights that no amount of analytic processing can hope to provide. #gids »

Vijay Singh: Session on big data visualisation was a joy ride #gids »

Mrugen Deshmukh: @Gramener Most entertaining talk yet. by S. Anand #gids »

Kashinath Pai. P.: Wonderful work @greatindiandev . inviting @sanand0 was absolutely amazing. #GIDS »

Sachin: That was an really awesome session on big data visualisation.. Had fun… #gids »

ARAVIND CHEKKALURE: Its reLy gd session by anand on visualizatg Bigdata..but never touch any tools and technologis. DisAptD #gids »

Harpreet Singh: Great session by anand Add visualisation to data to make it information #gids »

Raja Guru T: #gids thing of awesomeness visualization of large data. Lovely session by Anand. Way to go Saltmarch. Loving it. »

Raja Guru T: RT @ujwala: Visualizing big data session is very very interesting. Nicely done. #gids »

Prashanth: #gids data visualization session was amazing »

Subhashish Dutta: At #gids today, awesome visualization of some big data in the Indian context by Anand of Gramener. »

Japesh Thyagarajan: An impressive and fun session from Anand on Visualising Big Data, amazing illustration of Election and Education system , Hats off #GIDS »

Raj: I must say visualization of big data best session of #gids »

Apart from being able to preserve comments, I get to hear of this feedback a lot quicker than on a blog.

What I miss, though, is discoverability. When I blog, search engines index the content for anyone to find. I still get relevant comments on 15-year old blog posts. That, I suspect, will not be the case even for recorded talks.

But in any case, I’m afraid I will continue blogging less and speaking more over the course of the next few years. Please bear with me until then!

Comments

deepan 29 Apr 2014 12:37 pm: My hunch was that since you started your own company, you are engrossed with lot of work. Thank you for the update, do continue blogging.
Shankar V 30 Apr 2014 2:15 pm: I do miss your blog posts though! :) I did check some of your youtube videos and and I liked the ones on data visualization quite a bit. I am working on a product that tries to grab relevant data from twitter feeds and use that as part of its forecasting functionality. I was able to gather some useful insights in those. Of course, my product does not need visualization techniques - like the ones you have used in your seminars. :)
Bargava 15 May 2014 3:12 pm: Really miss your interesting articles. Your talks are brilliant and interesting. It would be good if you would post some link articles/ talks that you attended/ presentations you did/presentations you found useful somewhere (preferably in this blog).
Vasudevan Panhavoor 19 Feb 2015 4:16 pm: Your talk today at Scope international was very interesting.opened lot of new windows of thought and insight.Thanks

Random notes

Wed, 30 Mar 2011 18:44:48 +0000

The whole point of a blog is to be able to write what I want, isn’t it? Without the need to be coherent. Intelligent. Useful.

I read somewhere, in a top 10 list of advice to programmers – to avoid constipation. It’s actually good advice. It gives you a headache for the rest of the day. That piece of code is really not worth it, trust me.

But then, when you have a headache, there isn’t anything quite as beautiful and relaxing as code. Or good documentation. Like node.js docs, for example.

Just finished seeing Casino Royale. Usual average movie. 3,3,1.

I hate that git doesn’t work. I hate that my mobile broadband dongle doesn’t work. I hate that I have too much to do.

I love beautiful typography. line-height:1.5 and a nice Georgia to go with it. (Yeah, Ram had this one right: madness is not a result of being in GramEner. It’s a pre-requisite.)

Well, dinner’s ready.

Even numbered booths in toilets are better

Tue, 05 Dec 2006 12:00:00 +0000

Pegasus on why Even numbered booths in toilets are better. This is one of those things I’ve endlessly thought about, but never got around to writing about.

Comments

pegasus 8 Dec 2006 2:29 pm: Hey thanks man :)
ritzkini 9 Jan 2007 9:49 am: Same here !!! thought abt it so many times !!

Arrange books by colour

Wed, 13 Sep 2006 12:00:00 +0000

Arrange books by colour. It looks lovely.

Waiter rant

Tue, 12 Sep 2006 12:00:00 +0000

Waiter Rant: daily experiences of an anonymous waiter in New York. via Shruti’s post on Waiter Rant

Paul Graham on What Drives Bloggers

Wed, 26 Apr 2006 12:00:00 +0000

What Drives Bloggers?

I think what most bloggers are doing is thinking out loud.

It’s a little misleading to talk of “putting things into words,” because that implies the ideas come first. In fact, expressing thoughts creates them. And especially expressing thoughts to other people, even people you don’t know. So I think the reason many people like blogging is that they like the thinking it causes.

How to tie a bandage

Sun, 23 Apr 2006 12:00:00 +0000

How to tie a bandage without it falling off. It’s in Japanese, but the video is pretty clear.

Pallu baby

Wed, 25 Jan 2006 12:00:00 +0000

Hilarious post on Pallu baby. Nice read, Karthik. Stay on course. Here’s his follow-up (which I can’t find on his blog any more).

Confluence 2005 is happening and there are students from so many B-schools who have come down to IIM-A. Some of my friends from BITS, now studying in other B-schools, have come down as well.

Yesterday I happened to get a call from one such friend of mine who’s studying in ISB (with whom I wasnt in touch at all). After a couple of hi-bye statements, the first thing she asked me was “How’s Pallu baby? And why arent you blogging at all? Your blog is very widely read in ISB. Everyone knows your blog in ISB. That Pallu baby post was circulated around like crazy.”

I felt a pang of guilt when I thought about all those who check my URL every day only to find the same 2-month old post on it. So I thought I should let you guys in on the post-Pallu-baby-disaster developments.

(For those of you who have no clue what I am talking about, read about the Pallu-baby episode in the following post, Fool’s Proof)

Now, I didnt really talk about how we survived the whole thing in that post. Well, luckily for us, we had a couple of other messages between us which passed around the assignment and had nothing scandalous written on them. So, we could take print outs of those messages and submit it to the prof.

I was basking in all the appreciation I was receiving for my Pallu-baby post just after writing it when the phone rang.

“Hey Atul, wassup?”

“I just read your post. Damn funny man.”

“Ha ha. Seriously dude. What an episode!”

“But did you realize one thing ?”

“What?”

“The print outs you submitted to the profs were messages from you to the others.”

“Okay. So?”

“You have your blog’s URL in your signature.”

“SHIT !!!”

After getting over my initial shock, I congratulated myself on the second blunder in two days. Then I contemplated on whether I should delete that post. After a brief struggle between ego and sense, ego prevailed (sense never stood a chance anyway) and the post prevailed.

Besides I justified it with the theory that profs wouldnt really have the patience to go over the stuff students write in their blogs. (Actually, the prof did make some comment about how we guys go home and talk about women and happened to look at me when she said that. The whole class roared with laughter, leaving me struggling to find a place to bury my head into).

\

A few weeks back, when the mid-terms were going on, I met BV on the road. He greeted me in an interesting fashion.

“Hey, what the fuck did you tell Pallu baby?”

“Huh ?”

“Did you tell her anything about the blog?”

“Are you crazy? Why would I do that?”

“She was the invigilator today. She almost accosted me and said ‘Hey Mister. What did you write in your blog?’”

“What !” I exclaimed. “What did you say?”

“What the fuck, I told her I dont blog. Then she said, ‘Oh yeah, go ask Karthik Laxman’”

“Wait a minute. It doesnt make sense at all. If she knew I was the one who wrote it, why didnt she come to me directly? Hell, I have my snap on the blog.”

“Beats me, man.”

“Thats because she likes you, BV. She really does. I have been observing all those coy looks she gives you whenever she bumps into you.”

“Shut up, dude. I am gonna whip your ass if anything happens to our ID grades because of this.”

We laughed and parted ways.

Finally she came to know.

A part of me however felt betrayed. After all that I have done for her, is this how she thanks me ? Does she have any idea how famous she is the world over? My estimates are that at least 2000 people know about her. Okay, so what if she’s known as Pallu baby and not by her real name?

One of the major motivations of my blog-readers from ISB in coming to IIM-A for Confluence was to meet Pallu baby. :) I wonder how many more people have been motivated to participate in Confluence because of her. I am thinking of creating a counter especially for these people. I’ll probably call the counter “The Pallu baby interaction cell”.

I have my own theories on why she’d not be too happy with the developments. And I would probably attach 70 % of the blame to you guys - my esteemed blog readers. Following were some of the comments you guys put up to the post.

“Oka, you are a naughty boy. No hard feelings, but we have a job to do as TAs.
Moreover, its fun to make you guys cringe!
Well, until the next assignment…
-Pallu baby aka Pallavi Desai (Name changed intentionally)”

And this,

“was i looking pretty in the class today?? I kept looking in your direction but you were only paying attention to the girl sitting next to you. What is her name again?? I am quite jealous
-Pallu baby.”

And soon there were so many wanna be Pallu baby commentors on my blog.

**“Wats all this non sense going on in your blog. Who are all these people pretending to be me. As for you, stop staring at me in the class, especially with that cheap smirk on your face. Come to mu office tomorrow and we shal talk this over in detail. Its completely unacceptable. \

I am the Real Pallu Baby.”**

**“Hey..’the original’ is a definate fake. I am the real one and i really admire your writing style.Thanks for writing about me \

Pallu Baby”**

And this one probably takes the cake.

**“you keep talking bout pallu baby,all the while ignoring me (the other TA in ID). Wait till i grade your end term exams. Or else you could always ask me out.
love struck , \

Prajakta (name changed to protect identity)”**

\

She must have digested all these in silence. And then one day things would have come to a point where she simply couldnt take it anymore. Something very inconsequential would have happened and all her pent up feelings would have burst out. And the person who would be responsible for this inconsequential incident could be someone totally irrelevant as well. Something similar to the squirrel with the nut in Ice Age. (By the way, I dont know if thats a squirrel for sure. I just picked the closest animal).

Earlier in the day she confronted BV about the issue, one of my section-mates happened to bump into her on the road. As they were walking towards each other, they smiled at each other in recognition. And then when he was close enough to be heard by her, he said,

“Hi Pallavi”.

Comments

Sathya 27 Jan 2006 1:12 pm: I have written a greasemonkey scripts that might probably skew your statistics ! First, since I dont like the addressbar not reflecting the link clicked, I change the location to rootnode.freestarthost.com. Next, I see that all links are redirected from a perl script. I replace all http://rootnode.freestarthost.com/exe/r.pl?u= with blanks ! This was not the intention, I just wanted to practice GM scripting …
S Anand 27 Jan 2006 5:41 pm: No problem. Play around! I’m not very fussed about the stats.
Dhar 28 Jan 2006 4:56 am: Hey Anand, what did you think of The Belgariad? I have seen it quite often at various bookshops, but somehow resisted picking it up feeling it might not be that great.
S Anand 28 Jan 2006 8:24 am: I really liked Belgariad. Not classy, but entertaining and readable. Think of it as the masala movie of fantasy fiction :-)
Dhar 29 Jan 2006 2:12 am: LOL! I will be doing a bit of travelling soon and need some of these masala movie types. Guess, I will give David Eddings a try then.

Most blogged books

Tue, 20 Dec 2005 12:00:00 +0000

Most blogged books of 2005.

Tim Berners Lee - blog

Sun, 18 Dec 2005 12:00:00 +0000

So I have a blog is Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s blog. The comments on the first post pay homage to the father of the WWW. via LazyGeek

Technorati Blogfinder

Tue, 13 Sep 2005 12:00:00 +0000

Technorati Blogfinder tags blogs.

London reaction

Fri, 08 Jul 2005 12:00:00 +0000

Londoners’ reaction to the bombing. Feels like a classic British reaction. That seems to be feeling around office too. More from IrishEyes.

Comments

S Anand 13 Jul 2005 11:50 am: More at We’re Not Afraid.

Uri Geller blog

Fri, 08 Apr 2005 12:00:00 +0000

Uri Geller, the spoon-bender, has a blog. via Monish

Google blogger template

Mon, 21 Feb 2005 12:00:00 +0000

The Google-like blogger template had me for a while, when I was browsing Shamit’s page.

Comments

Kaviraj 21 Feb 2005 12:00 pm: Hi Anand
TOPFRAME 21 Feb 2005 12:00 pm: that was pretty good..
Dhar 8 Mar 2005 8:06 am: In the free anti virus category, I would put Clam-Av, in firewalls for Linux - iptables, IDS I am surprised they didnt put in SNORT, website ripper - wget.

Amazon enters blogging

Thu, 10 Feb 2005 12:00:00 +0000

Amazon enters blogging.

Comments

Navneet 10 Feb 2005 12:00 pm: Whoa! Hee-uu-ge Geocities popup on page. Thought it was temp. Apparently not..
S Anand 10 Feb 2005 12:00 pm: Can’t seem to avoid it…
Dhar 8 Mar 2005 8:08 am: Amazon India Center’s blog: i-5.blogspot.com
S Anand 8 Mar 2005 8:24 am: That was a good one! Didn’t know corporate blogs were getting along in India.

Google blogger fired

Wed, 09 Feb 2005 12:00:00 +0000

Google blogger fired, possibly for the blogging. Maybe he should talk to the Committee to Protect Bloggers. via MetaFilter

New commenting system

Tue, 25 Jan 2005 12:00:00 +0000

I’ve managed to get my commenting system to work. Feedback welcome.

Comments

ashish 25 Jan 2005 12:00 pm: cool
harish_an 25 Jan 2005 12:00 pm: hey snand… howdy? back to regular blogging i guess
ritzkini 25 Jan 2005 12:00 pm: good to have u back anand…been irregular with ur posts last few months…
SHAMIT 25 Jan 2005 12:00 pm: Javascript ?