Dear Friends,
– Ravi Saripalle
(Mission किशोर संदेश : विज्ञान -विकास -विनोद (Educate-Engage-Entertain)
Dear Friends,
Dear Parents
Dear Friends
Dear Friends
During our childhood days, the most engaging places in the morning or evening times would be the Tea Stalls and Barber shops. People often visit them not just to sip the tea but to listen and participate in the most engaging conversations. They would range from politics to business. Similarly, barber shops used to be hook centres for entertaining discussions, street gossip, and many more!! In these Tea stalls, there would be 3-4 people to make the discussion active. The rest of the visitors keep an eye and lend an ear to them, while scanning through the newspaper. They will not have the ability to overpower those 3-4 debaters, but give them thumbs up with their nods. I hope many of you might have experienced this.
Did you see any such Tea shops and Barber shops now? Did you observe that these Tea shops have transformed into Coffee Clubs? You can observe a few customers silently sitting in one corner of these shops and browsing through their mobiles. Similarly, these Barber shops are transitioning to Salons, in some advanced locations, to unisex salons! What do you observe there? Again, customers are hooked to screens, scrolling through a few reels. Those engaging conversations have become old-fashioned!
In fact, in those days, especially in rural villages, these shops also acted as social cops! They used to enquire like a friendly interrogation — Where are you coming from? Whose house are you visiting? What are you doing? How much salary are you earning and so on? In fact, whenever we used to go to our grandfather’s village, we used to encounter these questions. Surprisingly, by the time we reach our grandfather’s village (we need to cross 2-3 villages on foot or by bullock cart), these cycle peddlers used to share with our grandfather that we were visiting! This is the kind of neural network that runs there. They used to be much more powerful than AI-based artificial neural networks (ANNs) or Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs).
Why am I bringing this conversation up? A recent study (Semrush, June 2025) analysed 150,000 citations across AI outputs from ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and others — using 5,000+ diverse keywords. Can you guess who is supplying the most information to these LLMs like ChatGPT? You might think Google or Facebook, right? No, surprisingly, 40.1% of citations are coming from Reddit. Next, with Wikipedia 26.3%, YouTube 23.5%, Google 23.3%, StackOverflow 18.7%, etc. As per Steve Nouri, Reddit is now the #1 training source for AI. Reddit isn’t just a forum anymore — it’s the backbone of generative AI.
What does this mean for Builders, Brands, and Founders? Conversations > Content! Authority is being redefined (Not by domain age). A 20,000-word blog post has no significance, but Active Reddit threads, Engaging X posts, and YouTube explainer videos make all the difference. Trust is being crowdsourced. Community is your new homepage!!
Will there be any impact on the UX strategy of product and services companies? Yes, definitely! When we were studying RDBMS (Relational Database Management Systems), information was arranged in rows and columns! For many years, storing an image in the database was a luxury until object databases came. Today, your PDF document, your reel, or your picture on a webpage are all considered as database feeds for your LLMs.
Did you observe any other changes?
Ravi Saripalle
Dear Friends
Dear Friends,
Recently, the photo of Alejandro
Navarro went viral. He was a devoted math teacher from Texas. He rushed to the
hospital with a severe health crisis. He brought his laptop and charger along
with him. From his ICU bed, he spent his last moments grading papers—making
sure every student’s work was completed and no one was left behind. The next
day, he passed away.
However, many such dedicated
teachers go unnoticed. Having said that, a few teachers spoil the spirit with
their ill attitude. Often, teachers are shown as comedians in many movies, and
that impression is carried among some students. Generally, the true value of a
teacher is unnoticed as the student encounters teachers during
childhood/adolescence. During this age, they wouldn’t have major
responsibilities. Often this phase is carried away with fun and ambiguity, and
they do not recognize the value of the teacher. By the time the student
realizes this fact, there are no teachers mapped. In the process, many times,
the teacher also loses purpose and motivation due to this non-recognition by
their students. On top of this, in current times, the teaching profession has
become commercialized. Revenue generation and recognition have become core
motivational factors.
Where are those great teachers
like Sujit Chattopadhyay? He is fondly known as the Two Rupees Teacher. In
2021, he was awarded the Padma Shri. After retiring in 2004 at the age of 60,
he was concerned about how he would spend his days in retirement. Three girls,
who had travelled 20 kilometres barefoot, arrived at his house one day,
requesting him to teach them. This humble beginning has now grown to enrol more
than 350 children.
Being a teacher myself, sometimes
I feel I am also trapped. I hail from a teacher’s family. My great-grandfather
and maternal grandfather were Sanskrit teachers. My paternal grandfather, my
parents, and my sister were teachers. Later, my spouse left an IT job and
became a teacher. With this background, I also quit my IT job in 2010 and
joined teaching with a specific purpose in mind. I was able to spend almost a
year without salary. The fire in my belly was intact. However, when funds
started drying, I could not sustain that fire and committed to a day job for
salary—of course in teaching. Having said that, I did not lose the purpose, but
it got diluted with different professional and family responsibilities and was
often tagged with certain limitations. In those circumstances, you are no more
labelled as a Mission Teacher.
That was the time I realized the difference between Drifter
Teacher, Mechanic Teacher, Dreamer Teacher, and Mission Teacher. Let me give
the definitions.
Then the 2x2
matrix would be:
When we aspire for growth in
terms of recognition, salary, and promotion, we can never be called Mission
Teachers. They should be by-products. A few reach this level. My maternal
grandfather was a Mission Teacher. However, I rate the rest of my family members
to the level of Mechanical Teachers. Given good health and minimum
self-sustenance, I aspire to attempt once again and retest in the future. Of
course, we are all bound to fulfil certain family responsibilities. Otherwise,
the same world would categorize them as Mission Teachers but irresponsible
towards family.
It is not just limited to
teaching; the same matrix is applicable to every profession. Honestly, which
category do you belong to? Self-reflect.
Dear Friends,