This month, Gireendra Kasmalkar, Managing Director and CEO, SQS India, will talk about “Mindset – The New Psychology of Success”, at 10am on 4th Feb, at Sungard, Aundh.

If you are a professional in the IT industry, the SEAP Book Club is a good way to not only get a feel for the kinds of topics you need to worry about as you progress in your career, but also a place to meet some of the leaders of software companies in Pune.

More details about the book:

Mindset is one of those rare books that can help you make positive changes in your life and at the same time see the world in a new way.

A leading expert in motivation and personality psychology, Carol Dweck has discovered in more than twenty years of research that our mindset is not a minor personality quirk: it creates our whole mental world. It explains how we become optimistic or pessimistic. It shapes our goals, our attitude toward work and relationships, and how we raise our kids, ultimately predicting whether or not we will fulfill our potential. Dweck has found that everyone has one of two basic mindsets.

If you have the fixed mindset, you believe that your talents and abilities are set in stone-either you have them or you don’t. You must prove yourself over and over, trying to look smart and talented at all costs. This is the path of stagnation. If you have a growth mindset, however, you know that talents can be developed and that great abilities are built over time. This is the path of opportunity-and success.

Fees and Registration

This event is free and open for anybody to attend. It’s on Saturday, 4th February, from 10am to 11:30am, at Sungard, Westend Center, Aundh. Register by sending a mail to rsvp@softexpune.org.

GNUnify, organized by Pune Linux Users Group (PLUG) and SICSR is one of the biggest free and open source conferences in India. It will be held on 10th and 11th Feb in Pune and will feature speakers and attendees from all over the world (yes, it regularly gets international visitors).

This year, the theme is “Emerging and Next Generation Technologies in the World of FOSS,” and they are looking for speakers in these tracks/categories:

• Mobile Computing
• Cloud Computing
• System Programming
• Emerging Languages
• Sys Admin
• Security
• Web Technologies

To register as a speaker, go to the Speaker Registration Page and follow the directions there. All you need to do is provide a short abstract of what you would like to speak about. This, you should be able to do, in spite of the fact that PuneTech has provided you with just 1 day notice

Benefits of being a speaker at GNUnify:

• Accomodation and reimbursement of travel expenses for speakers from out of Pune
• Get established as an expert in your area of work
• Interact with some of the most passionate students and professionals in open source
• Give back to the community that has given you so much.

Register Now. See the GNUnify Website for more details.

Note: this event is different from the ACM Compute 2012 Conference, which is also being organised by ACM Pune, in Pune, on 23/24 Jan.

Agenda for the Event

• 0930 Welcome Alain Chesnais, John White, Anand Deshpande
• 1000 Keynote by N R Narayana Murthy, Infosys
• 1100 Tea break
• 1130 Talk by Frans Kaashoek, MIT
• 1220 Ramesh Mengawade, Opus Software
• 1300 Lunch
• 1400 Talk by Ravi Kannan, Microsoft Research
• 1450 Talk by Wendy Hall, University of Southampton
• 1540 Tea break
• 1600 Capstone talk by Narendra Jadhav, Planning Commision
• 1700 Concluding session, Vote of Thanks, Anand Deshpande, P J Narayanan
• 1730 Closing

About ACM Pune

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is the world’s largest educational and scientific computing society for the Computer Science/IT community, delivering resources that advance computing as a science and a profession for the past 70 years. The ACM India council was formed 2 years ago with a mandate of playing an active role in the science and profession of computing, with a special emphasis on India.

ACM Pune is the Pune chapter of ACM.

Fees and Registration

This event open for anybody to attend – the fees are Rs. 300 for ACM members and Rs. 800 for non-members. Please register here

Agenda

Keynote speakers:

• Dr. Ajay Bhushan Pandey, Deputy Director General of Unique Identity Authority of India (UIDAI)
• Dr. Pushpak Bhattacharyya, Professor, Dept. of Computer Science & Engineering, IIT-Bombay

Other speakers include Dr Aditya Abhyankar, HoD, Department of Technology, Pune University, IITB, Dr Deepak Khemani, Professor IIT Mandi, Dr Abhay Jere, Persistent Systems Ltd, and Dr Girish Palshikar, Tata Research Design and Development Centre.

These are the papers that have been selected for presentation at Compute 2012:

• Scalable Lock-Free FIFO Queues using Efficient Elimination Techniques
• A Robust Neural Network Classifier to Model the Compressive Strength of High Performance Concrete Using Feature Selection
• Mining Research Abstracts for Exploration of Research Communities
• A Generic Topology Discovery Approach for Huge Social Networks
• Multimodal Biometric System Based on Hand geometry, Palmprint and Signature
• A Review of Path Planning and Mapping Technologies for Autonomous Mobile Robot Systems
• A Knowledge-based Formalization of UBL Processes using Hybrid programs
• GPU implementation of a novel hybrid lattice Boltzmann method for non-isothermal flows
• Texture Edge Statistics for Efficient Retrieval of Biomedical Images Recognition and Classifier
• Enabling High Performance Computing using Microsoft HPC Server
• RobExT: A tool to customize microarray data for Cell Designer and Cytoscape
• FIRA – A novel method for benchmarking the cache hierarchy.
• Insertion and Querying Mechanism For A Distributed XML Database System
• Parallel Algorithm to Evaluate Contextual Features for Term Weighting
• Reconstructing the Software Environment of an Experiment with Kameleon

For selected posters, the program committee, and other details of the conference, see the conference website

Registration and Fees

The conference is open to anybody. Fees are Rs. 3500(2500) for professionals, Rs. 2500(2000) for academics, and Rs. 2000(1500) for students. (Numbers in parenthesis indicate rates for ACM Members). Register here.

The conference will be at YASHADA, on Baner Road, near University Circle.

Demo Space for Pune Startups

ACM Pune also invites technology startups in Pune to exhibit their products to the ACM audience for a fee of Rs. 5000 for one day. Selected startups will be provided with one table and a standee for the exhibition. This is a chance for a startup to reach out to a very select audience of computer science professionals from all over the country. For more details, watch for an announcement on the Pune Startups mailing list.

About ACM Pune

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is the world’s largest educational and scientific computing society for the Computer Science/IT community, delivering resources that advance computing as a science and a profession for the past 70 years. The ACM India council was formed 2 years ago with a mandate of playing an active role in the science and profession of computing, with a special emphasis on India.

ACM Pune is the Pune chapter of ACM.

A JavaScript hack night – i.e. a night of hacking on JavaScript with 30 others from Pune and elsewhere in India has been organized on Saturday, 14th January, at AmiWorks office (SB Road, Pune), in conjunction with the [JSFoo] JavaScript in conference which will also be held in Pune a week later. (To clarify, the JavaScript Hacknight is on 14th Jan, night, and the [JSFoo] conference is on 21st January, daytime.)

The hacknight is open for any registered participant of the [JSFoo] conference, but since space is limited at the venue, you will need to register separately for it. All you need to do is get your laptop, and get ready for lots of JavaScript programming, learning, and discussions. To get an idea of what a JSFoo hacknight is like, check out these videos from JSFoo Hacknight Bangalore.

There is a large chunk of people in Pune in particular and Maharashtra in general who are being left behind in the internet revolution primarily because they are not as comfortable in English as they would like to be, and most of the information on the internet is in English. This affects young engineering students and professionals, who are now studying in English, and understand English, but lack the confidence of speaking and writing in English, and find reading English to be a bit strenuous. This also affects beginners, not on the software/IT field, who would like to pick up internet skills, understand email, Facebook, Twitter but for whom English is not the first language.

To bridge the gap between internet and these people [TechMarathi] was formed a few years ago by a group of enthusiastic professionals in Pune who felt that writing technical articles in Marathi, or translating the best-of-the-web articles from English to Marathi would provide a useful service. This is what the [TechMarathi] website has been doing for a while.

Now, TechMarathi has organized the first ever 2-day TechMarathi conference on 7th and 8th January, at SICSR, Model Colony.

The event will span 2 days and will have two parallel tracks – one for beginners and another for professionals. The beginners track targeting absolute beginners will feature talks like: Introduction to the Internet, How to Email/Chat, Typing in Marathi, MS Office, and Blogging. The other track, for professionals, will feature tracks like: Using Social Media like Twitter/Facebook, Differences Between Student Programmers and Professional Programmers, Mobile Software Development, Cloud Computing, Web Mashups. The second day of the conference will feature a workshop on creating websites in Marathi, and a workshop on the Marathi Wikipedia, followed by a talk and awards ceremony with Chief Guest Atul Kahate. See the detailed agenda for more. The event has a nominal entry fee of Rs. 100, which can be paid online, or in person at Rasik Sahitya, 683 Budhwar Peth, or “Akashdhara”, Near Aacharya Atre Sabhagruha, Bajiroa Road, Pune.

If you know someone who can benefit from this event, please forward this information to them. If you feel passionately about this activity in general, please make it a point to come for the event and brainstorm with other like-minded people on what more can be done. For more information in Marathi see the MahaMelava website. Register now

Details:

What: TechMarathi MahaMelava – For Professionals & Beginners
When: 7 and 8 January, (Sat & Sun), 9:30am-6pm
Where: Symbiosis Institute of Computer Studies and Research (SICSR), near Om Market, Model Colony, 7th Floor
Registration: Rs. 100, register now

The Software Exporters Association of Pune (SEAP) has a book club which meets on the first Saturday of every month where one of the members presents a summary of a pre-selected book. Since the members and the presenter are usually senior managers in Pune’s IT companies, the books chosen are usually management books.

The book Crucial Conversations was presented by Nitin Deshpande, President of Allscripts India (a medical software products company with 1000+ people in Pune)

• This book, when you’re reading it, seems like common sense. But it is not. There are lots of anecdotes that will teach you interesting things
• After you read this book (or a book), you cannot put all of the concepts into practice all at once. Instead, you should pick just one area where you want to improve, and then just focus on it. Don’t do too much at once.
• A crucial conversation is a conversation you have with someone which transforms a relationship, and creates a new level of bonding. This is not a conversation for someone trying to be popular – a politician. This is not a conversation where you agree with everything the other says.
• A crucial conversation between two people with differing opinions, and where the stakes are high, and emotions run strong. You have to tackle tough issues, and the result can have a huge impact on your quality of life.

• Anecdote: people with life-threatening diseases were broken up into two groups, and the authors taught crucial conversations’ techniques to one of the groups in 6 sessions. At the end of one year, only 9% of this group had succumbed to the disease, while 30% of the other group had died.

• Right motive:

  • Start a high-risk conversation with the right motive, and stay focused on that motive no matter what happens.
  • Work on ME first:
    • Often you are not clear on what you really want.
    • It is easy to fall into incorrect motivations
    • Wanting to win (no, that’s not really what you want)
    • Seeking revenge (no, that’s not what you want either)
    • Often, these desires are sub-conscious
  • Refuse to accept the suckers choice – that there are only two ugly options
    • i.e. “I can honest OR I have to lie”
    • Search for more possibilities
    • Identify what you really want, and what you don’t want. If you do this properly, and combine these two, you can think of many other possibilities
• Safety: Have a conversation when both feel safe
  • If you feel safe, you can say anything. If you don’t feel safe, you start to go blind
  • Safety is an important requirement for a crucial conversation
    • Check the conditions/context around the conversation, not just the content
    • Learn to view silence and violence as signs that the other person is not feeling safe
      • Silence: Avoiding, withdrawing. Or even sarcasm and sugar-coating.
      • Violence: Controlling, labelling (e.g. “Fascist’), verbal attacking
    • Figure out what is your style. Do you fall into silence or violence when you’re under stress
    • Example: at a performance appraisal, an employee feels unsafe. So that’s not the right place for a crucial conversation. Give feedback earlier, as soon as possible
  • How to Make it Safe
    • Lack of safety comes from risk of loss of mutual purpose, or risk of loss of mutual respect
    • If either is at risk, then to fix it, do one of these:
      • Apologize when necessary
      • Contrast to fix misunderstanding
        • This is not the same as an apology
        • Here you explain what you did not mean, and contrast that with what you meant. This acts as first aid to restore safety
    • Make sure that there is a mutual purpose
      • Commit to seek a mutual purpose
      • Recognize the purpose behind the strategy
      • Invent a mutual purpose if no mutual purpose can be discovered
      • Brainstorm on strategies (what you’re going to do) once mutual purpose is established
  • Master your Emotions
    • Emotions don’t just happen – you create them
    • Something external happens. You react to that. Then you get an emotion. In other words: when something external happens, your brain tells you a story related to that event, and then you get an emotion.
    • To fix the emotion, fix the story.
    • Figure out what story you told yourself:
      • Notice your behavior: silence or violence
      • Don’t confuse the story with facts
      • Watch for three clever stories:
        • Victim: It’s not my fault
        • Villain: It’s all your fault
        • Helpless: There’s nothing I can do
      • e.g. Wife finds a credit card receipt for a nearby motel for husband’s card. Story she tells herself he went there with someone. Then blows up at him.
    • Complete the story
      • Turn yourself from victim to actor (“Could I be contributing to it?”)
      • Turn others from villains to humans (“Why would a normal person do this?”
      • Turn yourself from helpless into able (“What can I do now?”)
• Listen
  • Listen sincerely to others’ facts+stories
    • Be curious, even if the other person is furious. Be patient
  • When someone is not talking, use AMPP
    • Ask to get things rolling (What’s going on?)
    • Mirror to confirm feelings (You say your OK, but you seem angry)
    • Paraphrase what you’ve understood
    • Prime the pump – start guessing when all else fails
  • Remember your ABC: agree when you agree, build if incomplete, compare when you differ
• Action
  • Dialog is not decision making
  • Figure out how decisions will be taken: Command, Consult, Vote, Consensus
  • Common mistakes:
    • In case of “command”: don’t pass orders like candy. Explain why.
    • Don’t just pretend to consult. Really do it. Announce what you’re doing. Report the final decision
    • Know when a vote is needed.
  • Action: figure out who, what, when and follow-up
  • Document your work

Audience Discussion

• Question: What if one person feels that the conversation is crucial, but the other does not? Example: I feel a conversation is crucial, but boss does not. Should we treat all conversations as crucial?
  • Audience Reactions: 1. You can’t treat every conversation as crucial, otherwise you’ll get tired. 2. A boss just has to get used to the fact that every conversation with a subordinate is crucial. 3. If the other person’s emotions are not running high (i.e. s/he does not see it as crucial), that’s actually a good thing, since things will not blow up.
• Question: This seems like too much to learn and digest. How would you pick what are the first things to take away from here. Related: When I read books like this, I remember only 10%. How do you pick up more?
  • Audience Reactions: 1. When you read something like this, keep track of what you already know, what you’re already good at, and what are the areas where you need to improve, and pick only those to work on. 2. Don’t just read the book. Sign up to present it to someone – that way you’ll learn much more.

(The SEAP Book Club meets on the first Saturday of every month at Sungard, Aundh. If you’re interested in joining, contact Saheli Daswani saheli.daswani@softexpune.org)

ClubHack has now announced an online “Capture-the-Flag” hacking contest, and the first three contestants to capture the flag get a free ticket to the conference. (If you’ve already bought a ticket, you can still participate, and transfer your winning ticket to a friend.)

More details of the contest are here.

From the US there are members of congress and senators, top officials from Princeton, UC Berkeley, and a bunch of other universities. Just look at the detailed agenda for a full list. This is the first time this conference is being organized, so there is no track record, and I don’t know whether all the listed speakers will indeed show up, or there will be bunches of last minute cancellations, but even if a fraction of them show up, it will still be one of the most impressive collection of movers and shakers in the higher education space. Just look at the delegation coming from the US

The conference is organized by three organizations: Alliance for US India Business (AUSIB), State Legislative Leaders Foundation (SLLF), and Dr. D Y Patil University.

For more details, see the AUSIB website.

You can register for the conference here. It costs Rs. 5000 per person.

About the Speaker – Pinkesh Shah

Pinkesh Shah, is a Silicon Valley Executive who has been a Product Management Practitioner for the last 14 years in US. Most recently he was the global Vice President of Product Management at McAfee (now acquired by Intel). Having played a key role in understanding how global products have to be adapted to work in emerging markets, he also started the product management organization in McAfee India.

Before McAfee he had several senior management roles in product companies like IBM, netIQ and have launched new products in the high technology space in startups like Netrex and Captivo.

Shah is a gold medalist from M.S.University where he earned his Bachelors in Engineering in Computer Science and a UPE research scholar at Purdue University where he earned his Masters in Computer Science.

Shah started Adaptive marketing with a vision to create the next generation product managers and marketers in India to enable technology product and services companies to market their product globally. He is part of the Angel network which invests in early stage technology companies.

About IPMA

India Product Management Association (IPMA) is a not-for-profit, voluntary, grassroots organization. IPMA Mission is to Foster Product Design and Innovation and Catalyze Product Management/Marketing Talent in India across software, mobile, hardware, telecommunications sectors in the IT industry. IPMA organizes knowledge sharing and networking forums such as Monthly Speaker Series, Workshops, P-Camps etc for professionals interested in product management and marketing. IPMA operate chapters in major product hubs across India and for more information about upcoming events, visit indiapma.org

• Twitter: @indiapma
• LinkedIn, Facebook, Flickr: Search for “India Product Management Association”
• IPMA Membership Registration: http://indiapma.org/membership
• Event Registration: http://ipmapunedecember11.eventbrite.com/

Fees and Registration

This event is free and open for anybody to attend. Register here