Tag Archives: community

BlogCampPune: Carpools, Buspool, What to Expect, Contacts, and other info

(Tarun Chandel, one of the organizers of BlogCampPune, sent out this mail to all those signed up to attend BlogCampPune 2, and it is being reproduced here for the benefit of those who haven’t yet registered – in the hope of convincing you that this is where you want to be on Saturday. And of course, if you’re still not sure of why to attend the blogcamp, check out our reasons why.)

I am sure you are looking forward to this Saturday with as much excitement as I am. Rains have arrived in Pune, it’s cool, it’s green, it’s beautiful and it’s ready to host all the bloggers for the BlogCamp Pune 2.

Just a quick reminder about some cool sections of our wiki that you can use to reach the Blogcamp in more fun way.

Carpools/Bikepools/Bus Sharing:

If you are coming on your bike or car please add your name in the Bikepool and Carpool section of our wiki: http://barcamp.org/BlogCampPune2 as that will help you to meet a fellow blogger even before the camp. Now there is a special treat for those who are coming from Mumbai. You can join the rest of Mumbai Bloggers who are traveling together in a bus. Please contact Mohnish, a Mumbai based blogger, through this link http://itwit.in/pbc or sms your name, email & no. to 9768512770 (only sms). Kindly note that the phone number is an SMS gateway only, your calls will not be answered. You will help this earth in staying bit more green and you can have some awesome pre-blogcamp-networking 🙂

Time:

Please be there at 9:45am. We are going to start at 10am. If you are coming from any far flung corner of the city, start early. If you are coming from Mumbai start way too early else you are going to miss the fun part. If you wish to volunteer for helping us in setting up the venue, please be at SICSR at 8:30am.

Read:
I would suggest that you read the following post to get an idea about the BlogCamp Pune:

What to expect at the blogcamp pune.
If it is your first camp please read about the camp culture here.
Reasons to attend the Blogcamp Pune.
FAQs at our BlogCamp Pune wiki.

Contact:
In case you have any questions or you need to know about the venue please give us a call.

For venue and directions: Abhishek – +91 9970983032
For Blogcamp related queries: Tarun – +91 9819997412

Event: Blogcamp Pune 2
Date: Saturday, June 27, 2009 from 10:00 AM – 5:00 PM (GMT+0530)
Location: SICSR (Symbiosis) Atur Centre, Gokhale Cross Road, Model Colony, Pune

See you on Saturday!

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Why you should attend BlogCampPune – 2

Passion

That is the one word that a BlogCamp can be captured in – passion. Bloggers, the serious ones, are very passionate about their blogging. And usually, the more successful blogs tend to be about a few specific topics that the blogger is very interested in, and puts a lot of time and effort into. And there is nothing like learning about a topic from somebody who has put years of effort into learning about and writing about that topic.

And you get about 20 such people in a blogcamp.

First, though, I need to clarify what a blog is, according to my definition. Far too many people thing of a blog as a “Dear Diary” where someone writes about every little episode of his or her life, and what they had for lunch, and how much they hate their boss, and how Pune’s traffic sucks. Those are not the blogs I am talking about. Those are pretty boring, and other than a few close friends and family of the blogger, nobody really reads those blogs.

I am talking about those who use blogging either to write about interesting insights they have related to their field of work, or who use it to explore an interesting hobby, or a topic that they are very interested in. In general, these are blogs by people who put some serious thought into what they write, and write things that their readers are interested in.

In the first category – those writing about topics from their work – are people like Dhananjay Nene, who writes long and insightful posts on software programming, design and architecture, some of which take is weeks if not months to think about and write. And for anybody interested in being great at software, it is a must read; and like Suvrat Kher, a geologist who writes on geology, evolution, and the changing earth. In the second category are people like SandyGautam who is really a software engineer, but  writes the Mouse Trap, a blog about psychology and neuroscience, that is considered amongst one of the best science blogs in the world (those technically minded should note that his blog has a Google PageRank of 6). Or meetu, who in spite of being a CA and an MBA in finance, gave up the corporate life for writing about movies at wogma.com. Arun Prabhudesai is interested in the Indian Business scene, and his blog trak.in has over 5000 subscribers (and god knows how many more daily readers). And Tarun Chandel, who in addition to “regular blogging“, also posts his experiments in photography to his photoblog.

You’ll meet Rohit Khirapate who writes at Aamhi Marathi, Nitin Brahme and Vishal Gangawane who are reporters with Pune Mirror, Sahil Khan, who started The Tossed Salad, a life style magazine, while still a student, Debashish Chakrabarty, who amongst other things, is also very active in Hindi blogging circles, Nikhil Kaushal of Rang De, which is a micro-finance organization, trying to make a difference in the lives of poorest people for whom a loan of a few thousand rupees can make a difference, and people from OLPC Pune, who are trying to put laptops in the hands of poorest kids – the stated goal of the project being achieving one laptop per child.

Register, and attend. This will be your chance to find some of the most interesting people you’ve ever met. This will be your chance to possibly find people who share the same weird interests as you. This will be your chance to inspire a bunch of college kids, who will all be there because of their individual and varied interests. This will be your chance to be inspired to do something interesting and different with your life.

BlogCampPune2 – come to inspire and be inspired.

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Tech-Ed Roadshow from Pune (Microsoft Technologies) User Group – 20th June

Pune (Microsoft Technologies) User GroupWhat: A full-day event by the Pune (Microsoft Technologies) User Group (PUG) on the latest technologies from Microsoft
When: Saturday, 20th June, 9:00am-5:30pm
Where: International Convention Centre, Senapati Bapat Road, Pune – 411016
Registration and Fees: This event is free for all. Register here.

Details:

Image representing Microsoft as depicted in Cr...
Image via CrunchBase

Tech-Ed On Road brings you the very best in Microsoft Technology Showcase. Brought to you by the Pune (Microsoft Technologies) User Group.

Session for IT Pros has talks on Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, Virtualization 360– Technical Overview, Windows Client Windows Server 2008 NAP– Better Together

Sessions for Developers has – What’s New in Silverlight 3, Windows 7 for Developers, Welcome to ASP.NET 4.0 with VS2010

Agenda

IT PRO TRACK
Time Session Speaker
09:00 – 09:30 IT Pro Track Registration
09:30 – 10:45 Introduction to Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Ramnish Singh/
Devendra Thatte
10:45 – 11:00 Tea Break
11:00 – 12:00 Virtualization 360 – Technical Overview Ramnish Singh /
Abhishek Pradhan
12:00 – 01:00 Windows Client Windows Server 2008 NAP– Better Together Aviraj Ajgekar

DEVELOPER TRACK
Time Session Speaker
01:30 – 02:00 Developer Track Registration
02:00 – 03:15 What’s New in Silverlight 3 Vikram Pendse
03:15 – 03:30 Tea Break
03:30 – 04:30 Windows 7 for Developers Dhaval Faria
04:30 – 05:30 Welcome to ASP.NET 4.0 with VS2010 Sarang Datye

For more details about the events, and detailed speaker bios please see the event page. This event is free for everyone to attend, but please register.

About Pune (Microsoft Technologies) User Group

“Pune User Group” is a local user group of developers interested in Microsoft technologies and platforms. It has an informational portal with very active forums, it holds monthly user group meetings, an annual developers conference, and it also has a number of special interest groups.

For more details see the PuneTech wiki profile of PUG.

For other tech events coming up in Pune, see the PuneTech calendar. See also other PuneTech articles about PUG, and Microsoft.

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“wh[0x01] WildHack Contest” for articles/video/code related to cyber security by null.co.in

null-logoNull.co.in, Pune’s network security community for hackers, security professionals, security enthusiasts, and in fact anyone related to IT for whom security matters (ahem: if you are in IT, and security does not matter to you, you should really not be in IT, should you?) is holding a month long contest for the best security related content. Content means anything that you can produce: article, blog post, whitepaper, advisory, disclosure, tutorial, video/audio, source code, tool, proof-of-concept. Pretty much anything that you created on your own, and relates to cyber security, and would be educational for other people to see/read/consume.

The contest runs from 15th June to 15th July, and winners get cool “????” T-shirts (there will be at least 10 winners). It’s OK to submit content that you’ve previously published elsewhere (e.g. bugtraq, or your blog), but it must be your original content. So get cracking (or is it “hacking”) and email your submission to submit _at_ null.co.in

Contest Details

1. The contest starts on 15th June 2009 and ends on 15th July 2009. Winners will be announced on the null mailing list on 20th July 2009.
2. The submissions can be anything related to security/hacking.

3. Submission Categories expected(but not limited to):

  • – L2-L4 security/hacking.
  • Web 2.0 vulnerabilites and countermeasures.
  • .NET Malware/security.
  • – Code injection (Binary/XSS/SQL/Command etc).
  • – Spam mitigation and antispam evasion techniques.
  • – Malware detection and antimalware evasion techniques.
  • – Protocol vulnerabilities.
  • – Voip.
  • – Mobile networks GSM/CDMA/3G.
  • – Wireless.
  • – Cryptography.
  • – OS/Kernel and Virtualization security/hacking.
  • Bluetooth.
  • – Hardware based security/hacking.
  • – Cyber Forensics.
  • – Cyber Warfare.
  • – Social Engineering.

4. Research work in Progress will also be accepted.
5. The submissions can be in the form of:

  • White papers.
  • – Advisories/Disclosures.
  • – Best Practices.
  • – Video/Audio Demos.
  • – Tutorials.
  • – Hacks, tricks & tweaks.
  • – PoCs.
  • – Source code/Tools.

6. The submission should be original work of the author/submitter.
7. Your submissions* should be emailed to (submit _at_ null.co.in).
8. It is ok to submit your work already published on the net like advisories already posted on FD/Bugtraq, paper presented at a conference etc.
9. Submissions will be judged by core group members of null. Criteria for judgement:

  • – More technical the submission, more chances it has for winning.
  • – Innovation/Some thing new and never heard of before.
  • – Age of the work. Newer work will get more preference.

10. NULL will be giving away atleast 10 T-shirts.
11. For any further queries/details please write to (dhiraj _at_ null.co.in).

*Disclaimer: By submitting your work to null you are giving null the right to publish and redistrubute it in any form.

See the contest website for more details.

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India’s largest tweet-up: Will Pune break its own record? (#ptu2)

Image representing Twitter as depicted in Crun...
Image via CrunchBase

The Pune Tweetup is back.

Back in February, when we had the first one, organizers Bhavya, Purva and others had organized it on CCD on FC Road, assuming that “a few” people will turn up. A staggering 62 showed up , and managed to squeeze into CCD (that number is confirmed – I was personally present when the bodies were counted). Rohan talked about how he got business through twitter, Anupam Saraph talked about how to help Pune using twitter, Dhananjay talked about using different twitter accounts for different purposes, and I gave my twitter best practices spiel. It was covered by Pune Mirror, DNA, and Indian Express. As far as we know, that was the largest tweetup in India, and will be known by that name (“Largest Tweet-up in India”) until someone gives us details of something bigger that happened elsewhere.

Or, unless Pune Tweetup 2 (#ptu2) is bigger.

This one is on Saturday, 6th June, 6:30pm at the Mint Cafe. And I am not giving directions, because a SadakMap url is a more efficient way of doing that. To give the organizers a chance to panic (at the number of registrations), you should register at http://ptu2.eventbrite.com.

And for those feeling a bit lost, I guess I should explain what a tweet-up is. A tweet-up is a meet-up of twitterers. A Pune Tweetup is a chance for Pune’s twitterati to meet in person all those people they’ve met and interacted with only over twitter. It’s a place where you make friends and influence people. It’s a place where you run into people with interests similar to you. It’s the best place for professional networking. There’s also place for some unprofessional networking. It’s a place where you’ll sell your Ferrari and become a monk. It’s a place where you meet some of the smartest people in Pune (by definition, since, if you are not on twitter, you are not that smart, right?) And those who have been living in a cave for the last two years and have just emerged are probably wondering what is twitter and why is everybody going ga-ga over it, should educate themselves about twitter and take the plunge.

So what are you waiting for – register now. As they say, offer valid until stocks last.

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IBM Pune Tivoli Users Group Meeting – 6th June

IBM Global Services
Image via Wikipedia

What: A meeting of the Pune Tivoli Users Group – with presentations on various Tivoli products
When: 9:30am to 12:30pm, Saturday 6th June
Where: Meeting Room M4 (Video Conference Room), 7th Floor, Tower (B), Tech Park One (TPO), (Panchshill), Off Airport Road, Near Don Bosco School, Yerwada
Registration and Fees: This meeting is free for all to attend. Register here.

Details:

The agenda for this meeting is as follows:

Agenda:
0930-1000 hrs: Welcome and Introductions (Aleem Subhedar, Barclays)
1000-1030 hrs: IBM Tivoli Monitoring – Universal Agent (Himanshu Karmarkar, IBM)
1030-1100 hrs: Introduction to Tivoli Security Operations Manager-TSOM (Boudhayan Chakrabarty, IBM)
1100-1130 hrs: Hands-on TSM Installation and Configuration (Bharat Vyas,IBM)
1130-1200 hrs: DEMO – Tivoli Identity Manager (TIM)- Provisioning Policies (Deepak Kaul, IBM)
1200-1230 hrs: TUG Members Networking and Working Lunch (Pizza)

As usual, see the PuneTech calendar for other tech events in Pune this week.

Hello Android: An overview and group discussion of Google’s mobile platform – June 6th

Pune Google Technologies User Group GTUG logoWhat: Google Technology Users Group (Pune GTUG) presents an overview and group discussion on Google Android with Sushrut Bidwai
When: Saturday, 6th June. 4pm to 6pm
Where: Synerzip. Dnyanvatsal Commercial Complex, Survey No. 23, Plot No. 189, Near Mirch Masala Restaurant , Opp Vandevi Temple, Karve Nagar (Map).
Registration and Fees: The event is free for all. Register here.

Details
Agenda for this meet:

  • Brief History of Android
  • Android Phones
  • Android Experiments
  • What is Android?
  • What’s in new SDK
  • Android Architecture in detail
  • Application Fundamentals
  • User Interface
  • Resources and Assets
  • Data Storage
  • Content Providers
  • Security and Permissions
  • Developing Android Applications In Eclipse, with ADT
  • First Android Application
  • Further Reading

About the Speaker: Sushrut Bidwai

For more information about PuneGTUG, see the PuneTech wiki profile of PuneGTUG. For other tech events happening in Pune, see the PuneTech calendar.

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TZen: Community Powered Innovation with the PlanetAikon platform

planet-aikon-logoPlanetAikon is a forum that allows “community powered innovation”. It is a Pune-based startup which allows its members to “connect, collaborate and co-create”. It strives to be a unique innovation ecosystem bringing together a community of ideators, contributors and sponsors – in other words, it connects the guys with the bright ideas, the guys with the money, and the guys with skills and time to implement the idea.

This is the story of TZen, one of PlanetAikon’s success stories. It is written by Prateek Dubey and originally appeared on the PlanetAikon Blog, and is republished here with permission.

TZen – The Tool whose Time has Come

Hi- I am Prateek Dubey and I have a Story to share with You – The Story of Tzen

The Inspiration and the Rationale

It all started when Zensar Technologies Testing Center of Excellence decided about 2 yrs ago to develop a test tool which will be used for Manual Testing for Projects in Zensar and to encourage use of Test Tools among associates. Add to that the prohibitive cost of branded Testing tools and the Training & Upgrade costs associated with it were the significant business drivers which strengthened our resolve to build such a tool.

Zensar Technologies Limited
Image via Wikipedia

We developed our first Test Tool prototype which was a Test Management Layer over an Opensource Defect Management Tool called “Bugzilla”, which was based on technologies like CGI, perl and mysql.

We soon realized that our prototype was not going to fulfil the future requirements of Test Management, as CGI was slow and handling large data in an efficient way was a challenge. This was the time when we started a new prototype which was based on new AJAX Technology. An article about a newly introduced web services concept called REST sparked further ideas. After a month of design and re-design we finally had a draft design ready. We chose php for implementing our web services to support the development of a quick, easy to understand and highly responsive tool. We wanted this application to be a full-fledged WebTop Application, keeping in mind that we were designing it for the future. We came up with a prototype which was named “TZen” by our project manager Vishal Wani. Vishal encouraged us to do a Demo of our Prototype to some internal projects. The Demo was an instant hit as nobody had ever seen a Web Application which loaded only once and then ran on the browser as a Desktop Application.

With Vishal’s and Testing Practice Head Prem Apte’s continued support, we started development of our product with help from Testing Community in Zensar. As we developed TZen further we were facing serious technology challenges as “Ajax” was a new technology and we were at par with rest of the world in exploration of the same. Thus, every time we ran into an issue we had to resolve it mostly by ourselves. We were also using Technologies like Yahoo UI library and Dojo, it took us around 6 months to come up with a first fully functional TZen prototype. We deployed it at various projects and got a lot of feedback on our implementation, TZen was still very basic in functionality and we still had a lot of work to be done. During this time we had a lot of organizational changes in team and finally we were left as a 2 member team from a 4 member team.

Reinventing TZen with Community Powered Innovation

TZen went slow for about 6 months until recently when it got revived by a Zensar Opensource Innovation initiative with the help of Planetaikon Platform. We started with significant doubts about what we could achieve through an Open Community involvement. But with support of NASSCOM (under their Innovation Initiatives) and the leadership at Zensar we soon found ourselves inundated by requests from individuals from other companies to join this initiative.

  1. We had the usual initial teething issues as folks were adapting to working on a on-line collaborative co-creation platform (as against meeting face-to-face or the “business-as-usual” of e-mail exchanges).
  2. We got a lot of feedback from participants which led us to shortlist 27 (twenty seven) new features to the existing version of our tool.
  3. Those who contributed did so because of their passion to create something and did so in after-office hours and on weekends. In approximately 5 months time we were able to come up with our Release 1.1 with those 27 additional features which we have again contributed back to the community.
  4. Our Vision is to develop TZen into the most successful Opensource Test Management Platform. Our Team size has now grown to 66 (Sixty Six)!
  5. TZen is designed ground up to be Opensource and Agile development compliant product. It can be developed quickly and tested easily. This was recently re-integrated when a small set of students with only a few days of TZen exposure, created a “Commenting System” for TZen , which is going to be featured in the next TZen release again a validation of the value that communities can provide

TZen – A Snapshot

TZen provides most features that a Test Management Tools must have. These include:

  • Requirement Management
  • Test Plan Management
  • Test Case Management
  • Test Execution Management
  • Defect Management (integrated with Mantis)
  • Reports and Exports at various levels

The Road Ahead

As we progress, we look forward to the community to help us take this product to new heights. Some of the features we plan to include are

  • Extensive graph and Chart support
  • Flexible Imports
  • Custom Fields
  • Server pull services and more….

TZen has got a lot of business, technical and innovation opportunity ready to be explored and taken forward, improvements at every level are in progress.

We are now throwing open another call to professionals who are keen to participate in taking TZen to its next high. We are looking for Php 5 developers, Testing Domain Experts, Usability Domain Professionals and Testers.

Come add to our adrenalin and let us show the world how the audacity of Ideas can be supported by the passion of communities.

Join us @TZen on Planetaikon. We are counting on YOU.

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PuneGTUG: What Google Technologies would you like to hear about?

Pune Google Technologies User Group GTUG logoThe Pune Google Technologies User Group (PuneGTUG) is a group of developers interested in various Google technologies – from the Google App Engine, to Google Charts, to Google Maps and a whole bunch of others that make development of web applications (and in some cases non-web applications) easy (and of course they are free). The PuneGTUG has regular meetings where somebody gives and overview of a particular Google technology, to give developers an idea of what is possible with this technology, why use it, and how to get started. It is also a great place to meet like-minded developers in Pune.

Last weekend, for example, PuneGTUG had a presentation on the Google App Engine. The presentation was attended by about 25 people, and Pranav Prakash did a good job of giving an overview of GAE and also built a sample app right there to give the audience an idea of what exactly is involved in building an app. The slides of the talk are here.

PuneGTUG would like to hear from you as to what technology you are most interested in learning about. More generally, they are interested in finding out how this forum can be made more useful for you. And, of course, if you could speak on one or more related topic, then please let them know – speakers are always welcome.

So please fill in this form, to let them know.

And if you’re interested in keeping in touch with the activities of the PuneGTUG, join the PuneGTUG mailing list, and subscribe to the PuneGTUG blog.

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Pune Rails Meetup #1 – 21st May

Pune Rails LogoWhat: A get together for Pune’s Ruby on Rails enthusiasts
When: Thursday, 21st May, 8pm
Where: North Main Lounge, Koregaon Park
Registration and Fees: This event is free for all to attend. No registration required
Links: Follow @punerailsmeetup on twitter, Facebook Pagex

Details:
A meetup for all the developers in and around Pune working on ruby on rails – the coolest web technlogy available. A meetup to chill out together and talk! It is being organized for the first time to initiate and encourage interaction between the rails community in Pune!

Also: Check the Facebook Page for PuneRailsMeetup

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