Tory Read spent a few months traveling all over India to understand what is happening with the Wikipedia community in India and has written a short e-book based on his experiences that is worth reading.

Pune is one of important the cities in this community, not just because it has a very active Wikipedia community (WikiPuneri), but also because it has been picked as the first city where the Wikipedia Campus Ambassador program has been implemented.

Here are some Pune-related excerpts from the book:

“Wikipedia saved my life”

That’s what Srikeit Tadepalli, an MBA student in Pune, India, told me one day in June. He’d been a below-average student with few college options, but a prestigious school saw his Wikipedia achievements and admitted him to its communications program in spite of his test scores. Now, he’s thriving.

and also:

“At first, I contributed just to get the t-shirt, but then I started to like it,” said Shravani Joshi, a 13-year-old girl in Pune who is adding new material to the Harry Potter article. “It’s cool. Whatever I write is getting seen by the entire world.”

Later, the book spends a couple of pages talking about the Wikipedia Campus Ambassadors Program. Excerpt:

There is no mistaking that the [Campus Ambassador] training introduced a new vibe to Wikipedia activities in Pune. It feels youthful, energetic and hip, intentionally designed to sell the Wikipedia enterprise effectively to urban college students who are actively participating in 21st century global culture. This new version of the Wikipedia brand will take some getting used to for the established vanguard in the area, which has a more traditional way of doing business.

It even covers the flamewars that broke out due to differences between Wikipedia volunteers in Pune/Mumbai who wanted to organize a Wikipedia Conference in Mumbai and the “official” chapter of Wikimedia Foundation:

The second week I was in India, conflict between the chapter and the broader community erupted again on the email list. A few months earlier, volunteers from Mumbai and Pune had hatched a plan to host a national conference in Mumbai in November 2011, and they’d requested that the chapter support their efforts.

It took some weeks for the chapter to reply, and when it did, it wasn’t with a “yes” or a “no.” Instead, it proposed a framework to establish a set of procedures and guidelines for planning national conferences, including a national competition to determine which city should host it.

In the interim, the ad hoc volunteers in Mumbai and Pune had done extensive research on venues and costs, and they had invited Jimmy Wales to attend the event. They had energy, vision and momentum, and they were taken aback by the chapter’s response. Tempers flared, and behind-the-scenes conversations commenced-dozens of community members spent hours on phone calls, Internet chats and email.

There are many more interesting stories in the book. Anybody interested in Wikipedia, or internet communities should take a look.

Check out the whole document

Damn! Hackfests really work.

At the latest event of the Pune Rails Meetup – we organized a hackfest for the ‘second’ time (ahem – the first one ended before it started). This time however, we had a plan:

“Citizen Empowerment for Better Governance” – the aim was to complete the MVP for this in 2 days! We had a record attendance of 25-30 people on both days. I was skeptical of how much we could do, how much we can organize and if we can manage to keep everyone satisfied – it was make or break!

http://kipwiki.heroku.com — WE DID IT! This portal is almost complete (a few technical glitches but over all I would say it was success in more ways than one. The source code is hosted on github: https://github.com/punerb/kipwiki The hitch was that MongoHQ use v1.6 which does not support $nearSphere conditions for geo-spatial indexing — this causes our geo-location to go for a toss.

These are the lessons we learnt:

Pair Programming

This was not mandated but recommended (LoL — “mandatory pair-programing” — an oxymoron?). This photo says it all. Everyone paired with someone automagically — and it worked like a charm.

There were plenty of more modules build, tracked and tweaked. However, everyone was open to change, talking to everyone AND most importantly committed to “GETTING IT DONE”.

What we did

Initially,we had some mocks that we got confirmed – narrowed down the scope of work to 2 days, discussed with Peter at length what he wanted and then planned this hackfest. The first morning – we discussed the plan and with 1 hour we got down to business. This was our rails stack:

- Rails 3.0.7

- MongoDb (via Mongoid)

- Devise & omniauth for authentication

- mongoid-paperclip (with S3 as storage).

- Heroku and MongoHQ

- jQuery search result filtering

The Party continued into the night

Peter sponsored not just the lunches and dinners – but also ensured there was a steady flow of juices, snacks, fruits and beer! Shardul did not miss the chance to ‘showcase drink-fest’

Peter even bought a ‘Hackfest’ cake – what more could we ask for?

We worked on the first day till 11.30pm and then crashed to be ready for Day2. Day2 was very very productive and we were coding till 1.30am in the night to reach the finish.

Lots of beer, fun, ‘resolving conflicts’, ‘git blame’ games — and even doing something right like this one of Sergey!

Coding, Designing and Testing

We were able to churn out a LOT of code indeed. But it did not start there. We had to design the web-portal with our designers, we had pivotal tracker to track stories and rspec to test the models. No we did not do ALL this. We used Pivotal tracker to check and evaluate stories and unfortunately we did not do Test Driven Development. Some of the things that we need to improve.

The excellent part of was that we had some rock-star programmers – who churned out a LOT of awesome code and we had some excellent designers who helped with designing.

“427 commits from 17 developers” and here is the impact:

We missed out on Test Driven Development!!

This is one thing that we need to do differently at the next hackfest. Its very important to see this work beautifully and always be ‘code green’.

All in all I think we are ready to be a part of RailsRumble later this year and I do intend to get Pune.rb on the RailsRumble map!

Design thinking is more than just the art of designing a usable interface. Think of it as a skill that can help mold technology in to an agent of change.

To help stimulate design thinking a mix of celebrated as well as young design entrepreneurs will share their award winning designs and thinking models with POCC.

POCC is an informal group of the Pune Startup ecosystem. It contains more than 2000 people who either have their own startups, or want to start one, or provide some service (or funding) to startups. Click on the logo to find all punetech articles about the POCC

Satish Gokhale, was recently in the Times of India for designing TATA Swach, a water purifier unveiled by Ratan Tata, that costs under Rs. 1000, does not use electricity or running water often not available in rural India. Satish has designed several award wining products, and won the BusinessWorld Design Brilliance Award several years in a row. He was invited to deliver the keynote address at the International Design Forum, Singapore, and invited by HP Innovation Labs to present on “Design for The Other Six Billion”, Palo Alto, California. Satish is an entrepreneur himself, and he has accepted our invitation to speak at POCC on how he designed the Swach for extreme affordability, something that MIT Review calls “Value for Many and for Money”.

* Pune Design Firm Shapes Tata’s Water Purifier

Dipendra Baoni is the Founder and Managing Director of Lemon Design, a Pune based Strategy, Branding and Multi Disciplinary Design Studio. Some of Lemon’s clients include RBI, Airtel, TVS Lucas, Hindustan Times and TCS. An Industrial Designer from NID ( National Institute of Design), Dipendra has won awards in Transportation Design ( Audi International Design Competition – 1996, Nagoya Car Design Competition – 1997) and Web Design ( Macromedia). Dipendra is interested in the convergence of Design & Technology to create/identify unique marketplace opportunities that address real world problems and create compelling value propositions for users and stakeholders. Dipendra is also a Director at Bisquare Systems, an Industrial Design, UI/UX Design, Embedded Software and Electronics Design Firm and has also recently started ECCO Electronics, a company that makes environmentally friendly, affordable consumer products. Dipendra is also involved in academics at NID, MIT and SID.

Chinmay Kulkarni is a Business Design Consultant and heads Preference Architects, a Brand Strategy Consulting Firm. He focuses on identifying and harnessing strong motivators in the value flux to achieve the maximum revenue impact. He has been a consultant to companies like Skoda, Prudential, Gera Developments etc, and is the only SE Asian Consultant to global brand IKEA of which he will be sharing a case-study with us. The IKEA case demonstrates the role of creative thinking in business with a definite focus on innovation. His next focus is to help a Tier-I ITES company to build its global consulting practice in design. He is a graduate of National Institute of Design.

After the talks, we will have an hour for general networking as we celebrate the second anniversary of POCC.

Venue: SICSR,7th floor, (Model Colony, next to OM Super market). Map.
When: Saturday, April 3, 4.30pm
Organized by: Anjali Gupta, Santosh Dawara
Registration and Fees: This event is free for all to attend. Register here.

More about design thinking
* Wikipedia: Design Thinking
* BusinessWeek predicts Tomorrow’s B-School? It Might be a D-School

However, Persistent Systems, and its CEO Anand Deshpande, mean much more to the tech community. In the last 10 years, they have been a major force in shaping and helping the community find its feet and grow. To get a feel for the various ways in which Anand and Persistent have helped the tech community in Pune, we asked this question on forpune.com, the new question/answer site for Pune, and got a lot of good responses. Here are some excerpts

• 

  Persistent Systems is going Public on March 17, and the issue will remain open until March 19. In this article, PuneTech takes a look at the various ways in which Persistent and CEO Anand Deshpande have benefitted the tech community in Pune

  Startups founded by Persistent alumni: A friend who wished to remain anonymous has this to say:

  Being a very “tech” driven company, many techies join Persistent. There, they are exposed to cutting edge startups that outsource work to Persistent. They are exposed to the latest startup ideas, and they get a chance to interact with entrepreneurs, CEO’s, Business Managers and Engineers based in silicon valley. This helps build an entrepreneurial outlook.

  In addition, Persistent has also encouraged marrying corporate entrepreneurship with hitech ideas. Employees are encouraged to take time out time to shape Product ideas that later revealed valuable IP for Persistent. This practice continues to be refined and shaped.

  As a result of this, the Persistent alumni network regularly reveals several entrepreneurs chasing hitech dreams and this trend has only grown with the company. Through it’s alumni, Persistent has created a whole generation of entrepreneurs who might one day just enable Pune to figure prominently on the tech-innovation map alongside the valley.

• Supporting and mentoring Pune entrepreneurs: Successful Pune entrepreneur Gireendra Kasmalkar, who founded VeriSoft, which was acquired by SQS once said that he would meet Anand Deshpande once every year to get advice about his startup. There are many startup founders in Pune who fall into this category. Ravindra Jaju points out:
  

  It’s amazing – Anand and Persistent have touched many lives. He finds time for all! He mentored and supported us in our start-up attempt, with advice that still lives in my mind. He’s a great role model.

  The same is true for PuneTech. We regularly meet Anand and he has lots of suggestions, pointers for us and introduces us to people who could help us. In fact, part of the reason why PuneTech was founded can be traced back to Anand. A few years ago, when I used to simply working in a big company and did not take any interest in the tech community around me, Anand was responsible for pulling me into the CSI Pune managing committee. That got me thinking about what the tech community in Pune needs, and that finally culminated in the founding of PuneTech

• Supporting tech initiatives and organizations in Pune: Be it CSI Pune, or SEAP, or the office of CIO of Pune City, Persistent and Anand have had a hand in it, or at least played a major supporting role. Often, Persistent regularly provides ‘resources’ in the form of developers, or expert advice, to government institutions that are looking to modernize and go digital.Amit Kumar Singh points out that he was able to organize the first PHPCamp thanks to the support of Persistent. That attracted over a 1000 PHP developers to Pune, and was arguably one of the biggest unconferences in India. PHPCamp has now become an yearly activity, and has also spawned the very popular phpcamp.net website.
• The Dewang Mehta auditorium: This auditorium is easily one of the most sought after places for tech events in the city. it has world class facilities, a perfect center-of-the-city location, and in addition, Persistent is always willing to give the auditorium, for free, to anybody willing to hold a tech event in the city.The number of great events that have happened there (including proto.in, Innovations etc.) is just too long to list out.
• Support for various initiatives to help colleges and fresh grads: Amit Paranjape points to the TechStart Internship Mela (attended by over 800 students), and the http://punetech.com/techstartin-microsoft-azure-training-program-for-2009-cs-graduates/ (completed by about 200 students) were initiated by Anand, and most of the activities conducted on Persistent premises.
• Encouragement for returning technologists: Almost any senior technology professional who has considered returning to Pune/India in the last 10 years (myself included) has probably ended up meeting Anand, and gotten the “Pune” pitch – as to why they should return. One of the primary fears, that they might not find anything interesting to work on after returning to India, is quickly allayed by Anand as he talks about all the interesting work that could be done while sitting in Persistent. Many of these people don’t necessarily join Persistent, but they do end up returning, because the picture Anand paints is better than what they had earlier imagined.

If you can think of any other ways in which Persistent of Anand have helped the tech community in Pune, please add to the answers on forpune.com.

Normally, we expect to highlight women techies – those who have achieved something in the tech field. However, for the first post of this series, we’ve chosen a non-techie; but one who needs help from techies. We are hoping that Pune’s tech community will rally around her. Also note: women bloggers, twitterers will get a chance to interact with her at the Pune women’s blog/tweetup on Sunday 7th March.

This article has been written by Poonam Sharma, an instructional designer at an e-Learning company in Pune, and a prominent blogger.)

Dr. Capt. Ritu Biyani is a breast cancer survivor. Based in Pune, this lady has earned several feathers in her cap: ex-dental surgeon in army, first lady officer paratrooper from the army dental corps, a mountaineer, skydiver and a thorough nomad.

Her story is not important only because she is a cancer survivor, but because she chooses to dedicate her life for cancer awareness activism.  In her zeal to reach out to people around the country, she has driven solo across the country!

Along with her then 14-year-old daughter Tista, she drove to the four tips of India in a Ford endeavour for 177 days!

Together she and Tista (her daughter) hold the Limca Book of Records for first mother-daughter duo  expedition on cancer awareness across the country.

You can also read much more details about her story and her initiative at her full interview at the Visceral Observations blog, to know her cause and why another road trip.

On her first expedition, Dr. Ritu reached out to 26000 people. She plans to go on second expedition this time focused on North, Central and South India. However, for her endeavour, Dr. Ritu needs our help in several ways to make this expedition happen.

What is the foremost thing you need help with to make your expedition happen?

The first I need is a sturdy car, preferably 4X 4, since this is a road trip. A SUV with good ground clearance is a necessity. As a woman, safety is an additional concern.  I do not want to be stranded with an unreliable car that breaks down in a remote, distant inaccessible place. Last time I travelled on Ford Endeavour, which served well for the purpose.

Dr. (Capt) Ritu Biyani-Joseph and her daughter, Tista, with the car they used for their breast cancer awareness roadtrip.

This time I am looking for sponsors who believe in the cause enough to arrange funds for a car and other necessities like a data card and BSNL connection on roads. BSNL is the only one that works everywhere and phone is the only way I keep in touch with my family while I am on roads.

I would further need volunteers who can help me organise workshops locally during the expedition.

So you must be in touch with organisations that carry out corporate social responsibility initiatives?

Yes, I have few leads. But I am required to submit proposals. Since I have no prior experience in drafting such proposals, I am counting on help from your readers who are adept at this sort of thing. Further, any leads on possible sponsors are encouraged from the PuneTech readers.

What social media networking Websites have you been using to connect with possible volunteers for your cause?

I rely mostly on my email and phone. Thankfully, so far I have had considerable media coverage, all such articles carry my email and phone. People contact me through both. Then there is a Web site for my foundation Highways Infinite, which I admit requires an overhaul to reflect teh details of my work. I aim to add a section there where anyone can interact with the cancer experts.

I have never used social media networking, but yes I am waking up to its benefits. I am planning to open a twitter and facebook account. My challenge is that due to my schedule, I might not have enough time to manage these profiles. Moreover, I have a long way to go before I can be called ‘web savvy’. J

Perhaps it would help if we had volunteers who manage the twitter and facebook accounts for you. You mentioned something about requiring volunteers to organise the workshops.

Yes, though I have not yet planned my itinerary and exact date of my trips. It would be great if some local volunteers in different parts of India could step forward to organise the workshops in their area. Key assistance required is that they can coordinate and get together people from their community.  I also want to identify few volunteers, who could further be trained to conduct workshops in their own. This way even after I am gone, cancer awareness will continue.

This, as I understand, is a call for the volunteers in other parts of India, especially those living in north, central and south India along the central axis, the route on which you are planning your second expedition.  Is there anything that the volunteers from Pune can help you with?

Yes, I can think of at least two ways. I have been meaning to create a documentary of my first expedition and the recent cancer walk conducted in Pune. The latter is a short-time task. I have video footage that needs to be edited. I am learning to edit my videos, but any help in this task is appreciated.

However, creating documentary out of hours of amateur footage (me and my daughter have shot mostof it. )  is tedious. It requires more work. I also hired an video editor but it did not work out. Hopefully, through your readers I can find me someone who can help me with this mammoth task.

You mentioned a second way Pune volunteers can help you?

Yes, when I conduct workshops on my road trip. I would like to leave behind some posters on cancer awareness, facts and myths. I need help from some creative people who can create as many posters as possible. I have few templates for some such posters, but more creative ideas for the same are also welcome.

So there you go, techies and creative folks, you have it from Dr. Ritu herself as to how you can be part of her noble cancer awareness endeavour. You can brainstorm and suggest web-savvy ideas/strategies to spread her work, organise fund-raisers, and arrange for people who need workshops. Please step forward and extend your helping hand.

In case you want to contribute to Dr. Ritu’s project financially, you are more than welcome. NO AMOUNT IS TOO SMALL. Her foundation is called Highways Infinite. All donations are exempted under 80G [5] of the Income Tax Act, 1961.

Dr. Ritu is a guest speaker at Women’s Day Tweet up in Pune on this Sunday , 7^th March, 2010). If you are a women in Pune, you can register here and participate.

Contact details of Dr. Ritu Biyani

• Email: missionhighways at gmail dot com
• Phone:  +91 98812 32744

About the Author – Poonam Sharma

Poonam Sharma is an instructional designer by profession. She is a bibliophile, movie and theater lover, who doesn’t think twice to take up social causes. She calls herself a small-time activist and blogs at Visceral Observations.

(Editors note for those planning on helping out: Remember that Dr. Ritu is doing a lot of work by just herself. As such, she does not really have the time to do all the things that really could be done. So, rather than simply offering guidance, it would be better if you could actually offer to do things for her. For example, guiding her on how to use a facebook fan page to reach people is of limited use; much better is if you volunteer to not only create the fan page, but to run it (with inputs from Ritu), for the next 6 months. -PuneTech ed.)

A group of volunteers has been formed to put up a TEDx program in Pune later this year. And, since we would like to put up a world class show, we need the help of a lot of volunteers to be able to achieve this. Please join the TEDxPune mailing list and help out. There will be a kickoff meeting this Saturday, 27th February, from 5pm to 7pm at SICSR (the Symbiosis Institute of Computer Studies and Research, Model Colony. Map: http://sadakmap.com/p/SICSR). Please attend. Anyone who is enthusiastic enough can attend. It’s free.

What is TEDx?

TEDx is a local version of the TED program. You might have already heard of TED, or have seen some TED videos. TED is non-profit group that holds conferences all over the world with the single intention of spreading the most inspiring ideas to the widest audience. TED believes in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and ultimately, the world. So TED is creating a repository of ideas, in the form of talks given by some of the world’s most original and insightful thinkes, and videos and transcripts of these talks are disseminated freely to anyone who is interested. The name TED stands for “Technology, Entertainment and Design,” but overtime, the idea has grown to encompass any idea that can (or should) change the world.

TEDx is any locally organized conference that follows the TED guidelines. A TEDx can be a half day or a full day event consisting of talks by various invited, carefully selected speakers. No talk can be over 18 minutes in length. The talks should be cross-disciplinary, and must go over a wide range of topics. And there should be nothing other than these talks. No panels, no break out sessions, nothing. Just talks, and discussions. And we would really like the talks to be mindblowing. Something that will spur the audience into action. Or fill them with wonder.

I am sure there are many, many such people in Pune. But we need your help in finding them. Some of the potential speakers are well known, established names. Like Jayant Narlikar; or Arvind Gupta. We will try to get people like those; but in addition, we would like to find young and upcoming not-so-well-known speakers who have the passion and new ideas that will inspire the next generation.

Will you help us find them? If yes, please come for the meeting on 27th. And join the TEDxPune group. (or follow @TEDxPune on twitter).

Click on the logo to find all punetech articles about Rails in Pune

It was great to be a part of the Pune Rails Meetup which was held yesterday (19th December, 2009) at ThoughtWorks, Pune. It was an idea initiated by Anthony Hsiao of Sapna Solutions which has got the Pune Rails community up on their feet. Helping him organize was a pleasure!

It was great to see almost 35 people for this meet — it was a probably more than what we expected. It was also heartening to see a good mix in the crowd – professionals in rails, students working in rails and students interested in rails – not to forget entrepreneurs who were very helpful.

Proceedings began with Vincent and _______ (fill in the gaps please — am really lousy with names) from ThinkDRY gave an excellent presentation on BlankApplication – a CMS++ that they are developing. I say CMS++ because its not just another CMS but has quite a lot of ready-to-use features that gets developers jump-started. There were interesting discussions regarding how ‘workspaces’ are managed and how its indeed easier to manage websites.

After this technical talk, I spoke next on my experience at the Lone Star Ruby Conference in Texas. I tried to keep the session interactive with the intention of telling everyone how important it is to know and use Ruby effectively while working in Rails. Dave Thomas’s references to the ‘glorious imperfection’ of Ruby did create quite a buzz. To quote a little from Dave’s talk:

name {}

This is a method which takes a block as a parameter but the following line is a method which takes a has as a parameter! A simple curly parenthesis makes all the difference!

name ( {} )

Similarly, the following line is a method m() whose result is divided by ‘n’ whose result is divided by ‘o’

m/n/o

but add a space between this and its a method m() which takes a regular expression as a parameter!

m /n/o

It was nice to see everyone get involved in these interactive sessions. More details about my experience at LSRC is here.

After this there was another technical talk about a multi-app architecture  that has been developed by Sapna Solutions. Anthony and Hari gave a talk on this and it was very interesting to see it work. Using opensource applications like shopify, CMS and other social networking apps to work with a shared-plugin and a single database, its possible to create a mammoth application which is easily customizable and scalable.

Hari did mention a few problems like complexity in migrations and custom routes which they currently ‘work-around’ but prefer a cleaner approach. Some good suggestions were provided by Scot from ThoughtWorks regarding databases. I suggested some meta-programing to align models. Working with git submodules and ensuring rake scripts to sync up data, this indeed seems to have a lot of potential.

There were some new entrepreneurs from ______ who have already developed a live application in Merb which they discussed and explained details of. It was good to hear about how they managed performance and scalability testing. The Q&A forum which was the next event was extremely interactive. Some of the discussions were:

Which are really great CMS in Rails?

There were some intense discussions regarding RadiantCMS, Adva and even BlankApp. The general consensus was a ‘programmable CMS’ Vs WYSIWYG. Those who prefer more of the content management prefer CMS’s like Drupal, Joomla. Those who prefer more customization via programing and code, prefer Radiant. This topic could not close and is still open for discussion.. Do comment in your views – I am a radiant fan

What about testing? Cucumber, Rspec, others?

Usually its still adhoc – testing is expensive for smaller firms — so adhoc blackbox testing is what is done. I opined that cucumber and rspec ROCK! Cucumber is great for scenario testing and testing controller logic and views. Rspec is great for Direct Model Access and Cucumber can make great use of Webrat for browser testing.

In Rpsec, when do we use mocks and stubs?

It was suggested that mocks and stubs should be used when there are no ready model and code. If the code is ready, its probably just enough not to use mocks and stubs directly. Comments welcome on this!

How do you do stress testing?

Stress testing, concurrency testing and performance testing can be done using http-perf. It was interesting to note that ____ have actually done their own implementation for stress and concurrency testing. I recommended they open source it.

How are events, scheduled job and delayed jobs handled?

This was my domain Using delayed_job is the way to go. Following the leaders (github) and using Redis and resque would be great too but definitely not backgrounDrb or direct cron!

What project management tools do you use? Pivotal Tracker, Trac, Mingle?

Pivotal tracker suits startup needs. Mingle rocks but becomes expensive. Scott ? Dhaval from TW mentioned how easy it was to co-ordinate an ‘mingle’ with their 200 strong team over distributed geographies.

Which SCM do you use? git, svn, cvs?

People have been very comfortable with git and more and more are migrating from svn to git.  It was heartening to see that nobody uses CVS Jaju (I have have misspelt) gave an excellent brief about how code and diffs can be squished and ‘diff’ed with another repository before the final merge and push to the master. Dhaval gave an idea about how they effectively used git for managing their 1GB source code (wow!)

Some pending questions – probably in next meet-up

1. Which hosting service do you use and why?
2. TDD or BDD?

Suggestions are welcome!

About the Author – Gautam Rege

Gautam Rege is the co-founder and managing director at Josh Software, Pune.

Gautam has an engineering degree in Computer Science from PICT, Pune. In his 9 years in the IT industry, he has worked in companies like Symantec, Zensar and Cybage before starting Josh 2 years ago.

Gautam’s technical knowledge spans from various languages like C, C++, Perl, python, Java to software expertize in various industry domains like Finance, Manufacturing, Insurance and even advertising.

As with the company name, Gautam has a lot of ‘josh’ about new and emerging technologies. His company is one of the few which works almost exclusively in Ruby on Rails, the cutting edge web technology that has taken the industry by storm.

(Comments on this article are closed. Please comment at the location of the original article)

Details

Click on the logo to find all punetech articles about Rails in Pune

Hang out with other Rails geeks in Pune, discuss what’s hot, learn about the bleeding edge and find other like minded people on Rails!

Sessions:

• Introduction (conducted Session introducing practicioners and their apps on Rails)
• BlankApplication (Vincent – ThinkDry)
• my experience at Lone Star Ruby Conference (Gautam, Josh Software)
• Engine Yard Cloud (Anthony, Sapna)
• General Open Forum – ask questions to other rails practicioners
• other spontaneous talks

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• Engine Yard’s Rails app support gets another $19M (deals.venturebeat.com)
• Ruby on Rails: The Third Age (slideshare.net)
• Amazon Re-ups with Engine Yard (seattlepi.com)
• The Curse of The Agile Software Factory (slideshare.net)

Click on the logo to see other PuneTech articles about barcamp

This post talks about why it is a great opportunity for students, and why they should make every effort to attend barcamp, even if it means skipping college lectures for a day. Here are the top reasons:

• Finding great projects: Far too many student projects these days focus on ideas that were old 5 years ago, using technologies that are even older. To find be exposed to the latest trends in tecnologies, and to get ideas for very different and interesting projects, and to find passionate project guides, a barcamp is a great venue. This would be most useful for someone in their 3rd year. Now is the time to identify a good company to work with for a project. Far too many students start looking for projects in the beginning of their 4th year, and then scramble desperately as they’re unable to find sponsors. I would even encourage 2nd year students to do some mini-projects with the people they meet at barcamp. Nothing improves your resume as much as a “real” project with a “real” company. (Your course projects are all worthless.)
• Challenging internships with lots of responsibility: Many founders of Pune’s small startups will be at barcamp, and they are always looking for interns to work on their projects. Startups, by their very definition, have lots of cutting edge work to do, and not enough people to do it. So an internship at a startup will certainly give you much more responsibility, and the ability to work on latest technologies, than an internship at a larger company. If you’re looking for an internship starting in December’09 or January’10, come to barcamp, listen to the various presentations, and just directly approach the speakers you liked. Tell them you want an internship. Don’t be shy.
• Recommendation letters: I’ve realized that there are a number of students who want recommendation letters for their applications for MS in the US. Getting good recommendations means you have to do non-trivial work with people who matter, and who’ll be able to give you a good recommendation. Doing a B.E. project with someone is a poor way of getting a reco. Mainly because you need the reco in November, and by that time, you’ll have done so little work in your project that your guide will not be in a position to give a great recommendation. It would be much better to start working with them in your 3rd year. Even better if you start in 2nd year, so that you have a chance to do multiple projects with multiple people – more recos and more projects is better, right?
• Learning! There is a lot to learn at barcamp, as people talk about the latest technologies, new domains, and new opportunities. If you are one of those weird and rare students who’s actually interested in learning new things, and meeting people who can guide you, then barcamp is the place for you. (And if you are one of these, then I would like to meet you!) What can you learn at barcamp? For example, I’ll be talking about why it is very important, especially in India, to integrate voice (phone) and SMS into your web-based software. And how to do it. Priyank will probably talk about developing rich internet applications using Adobe Flex. Shankar might talk about how to convert your ideas to commercially viable innovation. Whatever Dhananjay talks about will be very intersting and useful, though he hasn’t decided yet. There will be lots of other interesting topics – but because of the nature of barcamp, we can’t really know what those topics are until the morning of barcamp.

So, what do you need to do, to attend barcamp, and how to prepare for it?

• Nothing! Barcamp is free. Anyone can attend. Just show up at the venue. If SCIT is too far for you, figure out how/where to catch the barcamp bus from SICSR, Model Colony.
• Bring a notepad and pen, to note down the email addresses of people you would like to get in touch with later, for projects|internships|guidance|generally.
• Don’t be shy. If you’re a good student, and willing to work sincerely, you are an extremely hot commodity, and everybody will be interested in you. You can approach anybody and tell them that you’re a student from X college, and you are interested in a project|internship|guidance. They’ll be happy to talk to you.
• If you have a great idea for a project and are looking for a someone who can guide you, prepare a short talk about your idea, and then speak at the barcamp. Anybody can speak. Your talk will help you find a guide.

That’s it. Send a “proxy laga dena yaar” sms to your friend and head off to Hinjewadi.

If you know a student or students who can benefit from attending barcamp, please forward this mail to them.

What is Barcamp?

A Barcamp is a “democratic” conference. It is not a normal / traditional conference. A normal / traditional conference is usually put together by a committee of professors, or industry veterans, and the speakers are selected by the committee and invited to speak. Many of the speakers are “forced” upon the conference by the sponsors, and they end up droning about how cool their product is. The other talks tend to be boring “lectures” or “speeches” that you fall asleep in. Who can attend is also constrained by money (conferences fees are high), or by other means (only members may attend).

Anybody who’s been to a traditional conference will tell you that the tea-breaks and the corridor-conversations are the most interesting and important part of a conference. Think of a barcamp as an entire conference that consists only of tea-breaks and corridor-conversations. Well, it’s a little more structured than that – but not much … A barcamp is not a conference – it is an unconference. Anybody can attend a barcamp. Anybody can speak on any topic that they are passionate about. A whiteboard is put up in the morning with the available rooms and timeslots. People can write down their name and the title of their talk in any available slot. Based on this, the others can decide which talks they want to attend. That’s it. Repeat all day. Democracy.

You’ll wonder, if anybody can speak, how do we ensure quality of speakers and presentations? By the “law of two feet“. The audience in a Barcamp are encouraged to use their two feet and walk away from a talk if it turns out to be boring. People are encouraged to find and create subgroups interested in specific topics, find a room or a corridor, and start discussing – and they often do.

This ensures that everybody finds something interesting, and often something unexpected at a Barcamp. Maybe you might find the 15-year-old kid who knows more about Search-Engine-Optimization than all the “industry veterans” you’ve met. Maybe you’ll go there to learn new technology and instead find some really interesting NGO or other social work organization and join that. Maybe you’ll just land up there, not knowing what to expect, and end up finding not just your first job, but a great career. Maybe you have an idea for a company, but don’t know how to implement it, and you’ll find someone at Barcamp who’s willing to handle the technology for you.

I’m not just making all of that up. Each one of the sentences in the previous paragraph that started with “Maybe” is actually a real-life story that I’ve seen happen during some of the Barcamps in the last couple of years in Pune. And there are a lot more such stories.

Over the next few days, we’ll be writing short articles on why you should attend Barcamp. If you’re a student looking for projects, internships, or recos. Or you are an entrepreneur with an idea, but don’t know enough about technology to implement it. Or you’re an employee of a big company and are looking to hire some really smart people … or you’re looking to be hired by some really smart people. Or you’re a startup looking for collaboration, business development, or simply mentors/advisors.

Visit http://punetech.com/ over the next few days (or better still, subscribe to receive updates (free) either by email or via RSS) and we’ll tell you more about why you should attend Barcamp, and how to prepare for it.