Monthly Archives: August 2009

Pune Drupal Developers/Users meeting

Drupal
Image via Wikipedia

What: Get-together of Pune’s Drupal development/user community
When: Sunday, 30th August, 4pm
Where: Richmond Ventures, C-30, Liberty Society – Phase 2, Behind Baskin Robbins Icecream, Near Pizza Hut, North Main Road, Koregoan Park
Registration and Fees: This meeting is free for all to attend. No registration required.

Details:

The Agenda for the meeting is :

  • Networking of Pune’s Drupal community
  • Discussion on Drupal based Social Networking sites
  • Discussion on Zen theme usage.

This is organized by Nikhil Kala and Rajeev Karajgikar. Anyone interested in knowing more about Drupal is also invited.

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Resisting Scala – Why good managers resist great new technologies

Dhananjay Nene, a software architect, a passionate programmer, an internet enthusiast, is one of the strong, in-depth, technical voices that graces tech events in Pune, and the online/offline tech community. In spite of an MBA from IIM-A, he has remained a techie, but he uses his dual background to good advantage – amongst managers, he becomes a techie, explaining to them complexities they don’t understand or appreciate, and amongst a group of techies he starts channeling managers, to hammer some business sense into them.

In the latest post on his blog (which you must subscribe to), he is pretending to be a manager who is resisting exhortations from his techies that the group should switch all development to Scala, the hot new language that is touted as a long-term replacement for Java. Note: these are not necessarily Dhananjay’s personal views – he is just trying to explain to techies all the issues that a good manager might worry about with respect to adoption of new technologies.

This is a must-read for all techies, and hence, is reproduced here with permission.

Why should I switch to Scala?

This post is a role-play and does not reflect my individual opinion about scala accurately. I am convinced about the capabilities and features of Scala along with the fact that it deserves the mantle of a long term replacement for Java. However language adoption goes beyond technical capabilities, and this post is a speculation on what a typical manager might be dealing with when attempting to decide whether to switch to Scala.

So I have been reading a lot about Scala lately and even opinions about how it will be a long term replacement for Java. I’ve also read some interesting writeups about Scala adoption such as On Scala’s Future and A Tipping Point for Scala. While I used to code a lot, my responsibilities today require me to interact with and address a lot of issues including those faced by our customers, our development teams and also engage with my peers and superiors on many other difficulties bedeviling our organisation. This gives me little time to try out Scala. I know I should be doing that, but sincerely I do not have the time. So I rely on the feedback of my team, the trade journals and other influential architects within and outside my organisation.

I have heard about many developers switching from Java to Python / Ruby. However I have heard of relatively only a smaller number of large Java shops which have done the shift – most of the switch stories I’ve heard reflect a smaller sized teams. I can feel the excitement Scala has generated amongst the development teams – the brevity, the functional programming model introduction, the exciting stuff being done concurrently et al. I have no doubt that, given so much excitement it must really be a good language.

To introduce my organisation – it is one of those shops which service many projects concurrently. Given the tremendous business and growth, I must confess we do not always have the luxury of being able to hire the most top notch talent. We do have a lot of projects we use Java for, and thats a language our customers are comfortable with. I’ve had some of the senior people check out Scala to gain some feedback into the language. But at this stage I must say I am inclined to evaluate the shift but not convinced enough to do so. I am sure that I could if convinced drive the change to Scala incrementally. However my fear stems from the fact that if things don’t turn out well, despite all the great advice I’ve received – its going to be my rear end on the line. So here’s some of my concerns regarding evaluating the shift to Scala and there are many of them, so some of you might be able to help me through this thought process.

  • Functional Programming : I’m sure in many ways it rocks. But my guys tell me they are not sure how to use it in the typical bread and butter applications which read from database, do some processing and write back to the database. Does Functional Programming help me in this context ? Will my team scale into being able to write functions with no side effects assuming thats a desirable goal ? What if they tie themselves up in knots and my release to the customer is risked ? I can’t afford that. Is functional programming even desirable in such contexts ? So I am not sure if in these contexts I should just ditch functional programming and work with just normal imperative programming capabilities of Scala. I am so confused, and afraid.
  • Different Syntax : While Scala runs on the JRE, its syntax is very different from Java. From what I could gather, it is much easier for a Java programmer to read (make sense of) simple Python code than to read Scala code. Is it true ? So even if I do get compatibility in terms of the runtime environment, would I be picking up a language that is syntactically so different a language that it would involve a substantial relearning curve ? I remember when we had to learn Java and Javascript. For better or for worse these were indeed relatively minor modifications of the C/C++ syntax, compared to what I sense as the syntactic shift between Java and Scala. Am I wrong ? If so, could you help point me to resources which help me understand that Scala code is not much different than Java ?
  • Sample code : Guys, I need your help. I need to see some good sample code. Some code which reflects how a typical application is architected, designed and programmed in Scala. And I don’t need it for a complex multi threaded actor based processing – I just need to see simple J2EE server based departmental applications maybe a simple recruitment tracking or library maintenance application. If I find a good one, I’ll just take it and give it to my team and say – there, thats how we’re largely going to build it, and even if we make a few changes along the way we at least have a reasonable template that we can build from.
  • Dumbed down environment : I remember my great adventures with C and vi and make. But my team today is very different. They want great IDEs. They must have syntax highlighting, autocompletion and nice refactoring capabilities. If I ask them to move, some of them might be excited about the change and be willing to overcome these short term hurdles. But there are some of them who will not be keen to do so and may be disinclined to support such a shift. And at the end of the day my ability to conduct this shift is a function of my ability to carry a large proportion of them along with me. Even when I considered a shift from svn to git, the IDE support was a big issue even though quite obviously git capabilities were really exciting. I couldn’t push along that change, and in this case we are talking of changing the language.
  • Is this a good time to shift to Scala ? I remember the early adopters of Java from 1996 thru 2001. While they gained a lot of experience, JRE and J2EE really matured only post JRE 1.3. Scala seems to be coming out with so many enhancements so fast, I am not sure if it has stabilised. I am told there is a 2.8 coming out in a few months. So if I train my team and Scala continues to change rapidly will I have to keep on retraining my team regularly ? And what about the customers I take to production. Will the frequent upgrades mean I end up supporting multiple customers on multiple versions of Scala ? Maybe Scala is stable but it would be helpful for someone important enough to make a clear statement that there are no new major shifts anticipated anytime soon and that these version shifts are likely to be no faster than the JRE version upgrades (which were fast enough).
  • Support from peers and superiors : I remember the day I decided to shift to Java. What made the move easy for me was the sheer fact that Java was a big paradigm leap away from the then dominant C++. Not only was it cross platform with binary compatibility thrown in for good measure, Sun ensured that it made all the right noises to appeal to the enterprise architects and all the business managers. I see the senior developers in my team clamouring for the shift to Scala, but my peer managers and my superiors don’t display even the fraction of the enthusiasm they displayed during the Java shift. The implication for me is that the risk cover I get when I order the shift is far lesser than what I had when I made the move to Java. Which means if things don’t quite work out well, I’m really going to be screwed.
  • Business friendliness : I understand all the nice talk about the technical excellence of Scala. But I really need to translate all these great language features into a projected ROI that I can use to convince others about. So I would like to see actual case studies of applications that were moved to Scala and what impact it had on the time and cost so that I can use it to compute my ROI. And what scares me is that learning curve may risk the initial applications long enough to push my breakeven point of shifting to Scala well beyond a 12 month and perhaps even a 24 month period. I fear things might not be as difficult but in absence of known studies, I am likely to lean towards projecting a worst case scenario rather than an optimistic one.

So folks, I am asking for your help. And while a lot of you may think that people like us who balk at the thought of limited IDE support are wimps, please remember that 80% of us don’t fit into the top 20%. And if you would like Scala to be popular, you need us as much as we need you. And if you are not too sure, please remember Lisp and Smalltalk are great languages as well.

About the author – Dhananjay Nene

Dhananjay is a Software Engineer with around 17 years of experience in the field. He is passionate about software engineering, programming, design and architecture. He did his post graduation from Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, and has been involved in Senior Management positions and has managed team sizes in excess of 120 persons. His tech blog, and twitter stream are a must read for anybody interested in programming languages or development methodologies. Those interested in the person behind the tech can check out his general blog, and personal twitter stream. For more details, check out Dhananjay’s PuneTech wiki profile.

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Nominations open for Innovations 2010 – Showcase your ideas

Innovations is an annual conference to showcase new ideas from across the country. It is hosted by the IIT-Bombay Alumni Association, Pune Chapter
Innovations is an annual conference to showcase new ideas from across the country. It is hosted by the IIT-Bombay Alumni Association, Pune Chapter
Innovations is an annual event hosted by the Pune Chapter IIT Bombay Alumni Association in January every year, with the aim of helping innovators and entrepreneurs of India to create and expand the ecosystem around them. The event showcases the select few innovators to an elite gathering of VCs and experts. Innovations 2010 is the fourth event in their series and will feature presentations by 16 selected innovators from around the country.

The focus of Innovations is on novel ideas in practice, primarily originating from Science and Technology. In the past, innovations in the form of processes, products and applications from varied fields such as medicine, agriculture, mechanical/electronic/chemical technology/ Information Technology etc. have been showcased. The innovations to be showcased are selected by a panel of experts drawn from various application areas. They also work with the selected innovators to fine tune their presentation and bring out the unique features.

While the event is arranged by the IITB Alumni Association in Pune, the innovators and participants can be from anywhere. The innovator can benefit from peer recognition, an introduction to the IIT alumni network & mentorship if required. Some of the past innovators were able obtain funding to take their product to the next level. Other interested parties and investors get an opportunity to learn about new ideas and applications and to network.

Note: this is not necessarily a “startup” event. Innovators from all fields, irrespective of their educational qualifications, age group or affiliations to any organizations are welcome to submit their entry. Your entry may be a process, product, design, method, application or even a business model or a model of social entrepreneurship. Innovations from all fields are welcome. Entries are sought from individuals, research/academic institutions, NGOs, or corporate entities (with an annual turnover less than Rs. 50 Crore). Eligibility criteria for submitting an innovation entry are

  • Innovation must be a truly novel idea
  • Must be based on the application of science / technology
  • The idea should have been introduced in practice

Nominations can be submitted at the innovations website. The last date for nominations is October 30th. The actual event will happen on 9th January, 2010, in Pune.

Related links:

Innovation Flow – The Science of Flowing Ideas and Inventions into Innovation – 27th Aug

NCL, India, is a research, development and consulting organisation with a focus on chemistry and chemical engineering. It has a successful record of research partnership with industry. It has over 200 scientists at its campus in Pune.
NCL, India, is a research, development and consulting organisation with a focus on chemistry and chemical engineering. It has a successful record of research partnership with industry. It has over 200 scientists at its campus in Pune.

What: Innovation Flow – the science of flowing Ideas and Inventions into Innovation by M.V. Shankar, Principal Scientist, Dow Chemical International Pvt Ltd, Pune. This is the 6th talk in the NCL Innovations Seminar Series.
When: Thursday, 27th August, 4:00pm
Where: Second Floor Lecture Hall, Main Building, National Chemical Laboratory, Pashan Road
Registration and fees: This event is free for all to attend. No registration required.
Details: Event Page

Abstract of the talk – Innovation Flow

Most of us make our daily living by generating creative ideas, solving tough technical problems and translating our ideas into inventions. Now what would give us greater satisfaction? – Innovation, i.e taking our insightful ideas and breakthrough inventions successfully to the market. How good are we at Innovation? – the present statistics are quite discouraging – typically, for every hundred good ideas, ten may lead to breakthrough inventions and one to an innovative product that meets a critical need of the customer. To accelerate the Innovation process and to maximize the Return on Innovation, we need a systematic Innovation process that will (a) focus and structure our ideation efforts (b) align our ideas to solve a critical need and ensure that the Customer sees added value and most importantly (c) give us the satisfaction of seeing our idea through the end of the Innovation Funnel.

As an inventor, I have often wondered how to bridge the gap between invention and innovation. When I got into managing technology programs, I struggled to defend and nurture those promising out-of-the box ideas that tend to get killed in conventional stage-gate processes. To create an effective Innovation strategy, I wondered how I can balance the capabilities of emerging technologies and the needs of emerging markets. I studied many Innovation processes, creativity tools, consulted with Innovation experts, researched many Innovative organizations (Google, 3M, Apple, Toyota, P & G etc) and also learnt from facilitating Innovation in R&D organizations (GE, Tata and Dow). I found that the secret to successful innovation lies in systematically growing the innovation potential of ideas.

I evolved my Innovation approach based on TRIZ – Theory of Inventive Problem Solving – to address primary concerns like:

  • How do we make sure that we are solving the right Problem?
  • How to balance Imagination Vs Knowledge and come up with creative, yet technically feasible, solutions?
  • How to learn from creative ideas and smart solutions that have solved similar problems in other domains? How to integrate this knowledge into our solution?
  • If our technical expertise / domain knowledge alone is not sufficient for Innovative Problem Solving – then what other new skills do we need to learn?
  • Is there a systematic approach to sail the Idea through various barriers and translate it in to an innovative product?

The discussion will address these prominent questions that come to our mind whenever we hear the word Innovation. I will introduce creative thinking tools like 5 Whys, 9 Windows, Reversal of Assumption, 4-Quadrants etc. We will also discuss TRIZ-based Innovation tools like Ideal Final Result (IFR), Function Maps, Contradictions, 40 Inventive Principles, Technology Evolution Trends and Evolution Potential.

About the speaker – M.V. Shankar

Shankar MV is a Physicist turned Materials Scientist. He is Principal Scientist at Dow R&D Centre, Pune. Prior to joining Dow, he has been a lead scientist at GE R&D, Bangalore for eight years. He has ten patented inventions and an award winning new solid state illumination product based on his invention. His expertise is in electronic and optical materials. He has designed and developed novel luminescent materials for application in White LEDs. He has been actively learning, practicing and teaching systematic innovation methods and TRIZ-based innovative problem solving tools. He facilitates cross-pollination of ideas, innovative problem solving and the creation of strategic intellectual property across technology domains.

His interests include physics, philosophy, psychology, creativity and technology entrepreneurship.

Contact info: Dr. Shankar MV, Email: Shankar.Venugopal07@gmail.com

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Call for Papers: ClubHack 2009 Information Security Conference

Click on logo for PuneTech wiki page on ClubHack
Click on logo for PuneTech wiki page on ClubHack

ClubHack is an initiative to bring security awareness to common people who use computers and internet in their daily life. It’s a member driven open community to make cyber security a common sense. The phenomenal growth of the Internet economy has led to a sharp increase in computer crimes and hacking incidents. ClubHack aims at making technology users aware of the risks associated with cyber transactions as well as the security measures.

ClubHack2009 is the third annual ClubHack conference and will revolve around technical presentations/demonstrations on topics from the world of Information Security. These presentations are expected to be of 40 minutes each. The schedule time for each presenter would be 50 minutes out of which 40 minutes are for the presentation & 10 for the question-answer sessions.

ClubHack is inviting submissions on technical topics or demonstrations that can be included in the conference. This is a list of suggested topics:

# Protocol / Application based vulnerability in networks and computers
# Firewall Evasion techniques
# Intrusion detection/prevention
# SPAM fighting
# Data Recovery and Incident Response
# Mobile Security (cellular technologies)
# Virus and Worms
# WLAN and Bluetooth Security
# Analysis of malicious code
# Cryptography and Cryptanalysis
# Computer forensics
# File system security
# Secure coding & code analysis
# Hardware modification
# Patch writing for vulnerabilities
# Open source hacking toolkit
# Cyber Crime & law

This is more of an indicative list, the papers submission can be on other topics also but have to be close to this & the theme of the event.

Important Dates
CFP Open: 15th August 2009
CFP Close: 15th October 2009

How to submit
Click Here

For more information about ClubHack see the PuneTech wiki page for ClubHack.

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Can we use technology to solve some of Pune’s problems?

Click on the logo to get all PuneTech articles about PuneTech

A few weeks ago, we had asked our readers, “How to increase community participation in the Pune tech scene?”, and we received a huge number of very interesting suggestions. Please read the comments on that article for the full list of suggestions. We have decided that over the next few weeks, we will put up individual posts highlighting some of those suggestions, and asking for feedback on how best to take this forward.

Unmesh Mayekar, of SadakMap, made this suggestion:

Start a series on PuneTech where everyday problems (plaguing Pune) are taken and an attempt is made to address them using technology.

Essentially, someone poses a problem (e.g. uncoordinated traffic lights) and puts forward an attempt at solving this problem. PuneTech community debates the feasibility and if it stands the test interested folks come together to take it further. A sponsor willing to put their name (and some moolah) behind the approved initiatives would round this off well.

We are techies. Technology is our strength. So it makes sense that we try to find ways in which we can use technology to solve issues. Granted that technology isn’t always a solution to problems, but it can be a part of the solution, especially if we team up with others (non-techies) who are domain experts. Often, domain experts who are working on a problem at the grassroots are not technologically savvy, and hence are not able to leverage technology well, and a little technology boost can significantly improve the impact of their efforts. This is where we can help.

What is the best method of taking this idea forward? As Unmesh indicated, we can start a series on PuneTech itself where the problems and proposed tech solutions are posed and voted upon. Or we could create a separate, more specialized package that is better at keeping track of votes (if you have good experiences with any such open source package, then let us know in the comments).

What other things do we need to take care of to ensure that this is successful? One thing I strongly feel is that every idea needs an “owner” who is willing to give non-trivial amounts of time for that idea for the first few months. I believe that the number of people intersted in an idea looks like this:

After the initial hype, where a number of people show interest, there comes “the dip” when people back out for various reasons (or just stop responding), and then only a few people are left (in some cases, just the “owner”). It is necessary that the idea owner continues working on the idea and making progress during this time, so that they can come out of the dip towards success. For that, you need to be passionate about the idea, and you should be clear that there will be a chunk of time when you are working on the idea alone. Basically, what I am saying is that you cannot depend upon “community participation”, especially in the early months.

So, every project needs a passionate “owner”.

What else?

Please give all your ideas, suggestions, feedback in the comments below.

PuneChips Event: ASIC Verification trends and challenges – Jagdish Doma, former director of VLSI design Conexant Systems – 20 Aug

The integrated circuit from an Intel 8742, a 8...
Image via Wikipedia

What: Trends and Challenges by Jagdish Doma, former director of VLSI design for Conexant Systems
When: Thursday, 20th August, 6:30pm to 8:00pm
Where: Venture Center, NCL Innovation Park, Pashan Road. To reach Venture Center, go past NCL towards Pashan, pass the cricket ground adjacent to NCL and then you’ll find NCL Innovation Park / Venture Center on the right hand side. Map
Registration and fees: This event is free for all to attend. No registration required.

ASIC verification – Trends and Challenges

Jagdish will discuss the ASIC verification flow, various verification and validation techniques, and strength areas and limitations of each technique and the key challenges faced by companies during the ASIC verification cycle.

About the speaker – Jagdish Doma

Jagdish served as Director of VLSI Division for Conexant Systems in Pune where he was responsible for managing diverse teams involved in design, verification, validation, implementation, physical design and software development. During his 19 year career, Jagdish has held various senoir techical positions at Texas Instruments, Cirrus Logic and AMD. He brings a wide range of experience in Architecture, Design, pre-silicon verification, post-silicon validation and leading organizations to successful product development. Jagdish holds Bachelor’s in Electrical Engineering from University of Pune and a Master’s in Electrical Engineering fromTexas A&M University.

About PuneChips

PuneChips is a special interest group on semiconductor design and applications. PuneChips was formed to foster an environment for growth of companies in the semiconductor design and applications segment in the Pune area. Our goal is to build an ecosystem similar to PuneTech for companies in this field, where they can exchange information, consult with experts, and start and grow their businesses.

PuneChips has been started by Abhijit Athavale, president and CEO of Markonix, and a high-tech marketing consultant. He has 16+ years of high-technology industry experience. Prior to Markonix, Abhijit spent over 11 years at Xilinx, Inc. in various engineering, applications and marketing roles. In his role as a marketing consultant, he has held executive management positions at several companies. He has a masters degree in electrical engineering from Texas A&M University and a bachelors degree in electrical engineering from University of Pune. He is an accomplished speaker and author of several publications including a book.

For more information, see the PuneTech wiki profile of PuneChips, and/or join the PuneChips mailing list.

Please forward this mail to anybody in Pune who is interested in semiconductors, chip design, VLSI design, chip testing, and embedded applications.

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“Don’t develop any software until you have a customer” – Interview of serial entrepreneur Anand Soman

As a part of the new, experimental PuneTech video series, we interviewed Anand Soman, CEO of Pune-based startup Infinishare, and serial entrepreneur. Infinishare provides software for a host of internet enabled devices, including digital photoframe devices, digital displays, home internet devices. They provide a full software stack for such devices, but their core IP is in device-to-cloud, and device-to-device communications.

Before Infinishare, Anand has had two successful exits as an entrepreneur – one for a bootstrapped startup, and one for a VC funded startup. See the PuneTech report of last year’s POCC meeting “How (and Why) to bootstrap your own startup,” for some of Anand’s thoughts on this topics.

In today’s video we asked him about his company, and more importantly about what advice he has for young entrepreneurs. (We are still experimenting with our video creation process, so the sound is still bad. We will had a fix for this soon, but in the meantime, please max the volume when you view this video):

Some interesting excerpts from this interview:

  • Don’t develop any software until you have a customer (so you’re sure there’s a market)
  • Focus on paying customers from the beginning
  • It is very difficult to get the freemium model to work
  • If you have users for your product who are not paying, don’t call them customers! Get real paying customers

See the video for these and other insights.

About Anand Soman

Anand is co-founder of Infinishare technologies.

Before Infinishare, Anand founded Intigma Inc, where they wrote AI-based engines for automated classification and extraction of content. Intigma was acquired by Emptoris Inc., after which Anand headed their India centre. Before Intigma, Anand founded Testchip Technologies, developing tools and cell libraries for Testchip design. Testchip was acquired by HPL Technologies Inc.

Anand received his B.Tech from IIT Bombay, and was the recipient of the Institute Medal for Electrical Engg. He received his M.S.E.E. and Ph.D degrees from California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, USA, specializing in DSP & Communications. He worked at AT&T, Murray Hill, before founding Testchip. He has published numerous research papers in International Journals & Conferences and has several years of project execution & management experience.

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Call for Speakers – IndicThreads Conference on Java Technologies, Pune Dec 2009

indicthreads logo smallThe IndicThreads Java conference is a technology conference that happens in Pune every year. The conference has in-depth, vendor-neutral technical sessions about a wide range of topics in the Java space. If you have done some interesting work in or related to Java, you should consider submitting a proposal.

PuneTech has detailed coverage of last year’s IndicThreads Java conference. For even more details, you can see the list of speakers and the slides used in their presentations at the conference website. That should give you an idea of what this conference is about.

Here is the call for speakers reproduced from the conference website:

Call for Speakers

IndicThreads.com invites submissions for the 4th IndicThreads.com Conference On Java Technology to be held on 11th and 12th December 2009 in Pune, India. The conference is the premier independent conference on Java technology in India and is the place to be, to learn the latest in the Java world while meeting with like-minded individuals from across the industry.

IndicThreads welcomes submissions from subject experts across fields, geographic locations and areas of development. Topics of interest include new and groundbreaking technologies and emerging trends, successful practices and real world learnings.

Topics appropriate for submission to this conference include but are not restricted to the below, stated in no particular order –

1. Java Language Specs & Standards
2. Optimization, Scaling and Performance Tuning
3. Cloud Computing
4. Rich Internet Applications, Ajax and Web 2.0
5. Scripting languages for Java like JRuby, Groovy, Rhino, JavaFX.
6. Open Source Frameworks
7. Enterprise Architecture
8. Spring
9. Virtualization
10. Social Networking
11. Security
12. Agile Techniques, Extreme Programing, Test Driven Development
13. New and emerging technologies
14. Case Studies and Real World Experiences

Submission

  • Please note that marketing-oriented submissions aimed at promoting specific organizations or products will not be accepted.
  • All sessions will be between 50-90 minutes. One / both of your proposals might be accepted.
  • The audience consists mostly of senior developers and project leads. Before submission consider how your submission can provide best value to this target segment.
  • Submissions will be accepted only on the website and not through emails. Please complete the entire form including the two session proposals.
  • The decision of the conference team as regards sessions, durations, timings, speaker benefits and all related aspects will be final and binding.

Speaker Benefits

  • Complimentary Full Conference Pass
  • We will arrange for your hotel stay and cover the room tariff. Please note that hotel incidentals will not be covered.
  • We will reimburse up to Rs 5000 from the air fare or the actual, whichever is less.
  • Speaking at an IndicThreads event gets you recognition as a subject expert.

Write to [ conf AT rightrix DOT com ] in case of any other queries.

Important Dates

  • Submission Deadline – 31st August 2009
  • Conference Dates – 11 and 12 December, 2009
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PuneTech editorial policy – biased, and proud of it!

Click on the logo to get all PuneTech articles about PuneTech
Click on the logo to get all PuneTech articles about PuneTech

On a recent article, an anonymous commenter castigated us thus:

This posts comes across as a promotion of a person more than his views/contributions or even his blog. Please be objective in future such promotions (a disclaimer, e.g. he is not paying or otherwise doing any favors to PuneTech to promote him, would also help). Peace.

While responding to that comment, we felt that now would be a good time to let PuneTech readers know what are the editorial guidelines PuneTech uses in determining what goes up on the front page, and the tone we use. We encourage you to read the detailed guidelines, and give us your feedback, but the quick drift of the guidelines is this:

  • PuneTech is a completely non-commercial site. Nobody makes any money from this site. No favours of any kind are accepted in return for any content posted on the site.
  • The PuneTech front page has never been, and never will be objective. We select what information appears on the front page, and we give our own opinion along with it. We feel that this makes the site (more) useful.
  • We encourage opposing points of view in the comments – those too make the site more useful.
  • User comments are governed by a separate comments policy.
  • The PuneTech wiki, and the PuneTech calendar are not governed by these guidelines. Anybody is free to post anything there, as long as it is relevant to Pune and to technology.

The basic idea is that we strive hard to be free of vested insterests, but we are not objective. We are not fair and balanced. In fact, we are quite unbalanced! We are opinionated, and make those opinions known.

We do believe a little bit in the “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything” philosophy. If we don’t like a particular company, or person, or technology, we simply don’t feature it on PuneTech. Unfortunately though, there are lots of companies, people, groups and technologies that we like quite a lot, but haven’t yet put up on PuneTech, simply because we lack the time to do so.

That’s where you can come in. Please help PuneTech and the tech community in Pune by writing articles about interesting technology in Pune. You can write the article for PuneTech, or you can write it for your own blog and let us know, so we can publish it on PuneTech. If you publish a long, detailed article about the technology domain that your company is working in, that is of wider interest to PuneTech readers, we’ll even allow you to put in a pitch for your own company (and the kind of people you’re looking to hire) at the end of your article. That much cheating is allowed, as is explicitly mentioned in the editorial guidelines.

If you have any comments, suggestions or any other feedback for us, please let us know in the comments below.