Monthly Archives: January 2010

Pune Google Technologies User Group (GTUG) meet: Seminar on Google Wave – Feb 6

What: Pune Google Technology Users Group (Pune GTUG) presents a seminar on Google Wave
When: Saturday, 6 February, 5pm to 8pm
Where: Synerzip Softech – L5 (Terrace), Dnyanvatsal Commercial Complex, Opposite Vanadevi mandir, Karve Nagar
Registration and Fees: The event is free for all, no registration required.
Link: http://blog.punegtug.org/2010/01/seminar-on-google-wave-intro-gadgets.html

Pune Google Technologies User Group GTUG logo
Click on the logo to find all punetech articles about the Pune GTUG

Google Wave

Pune GTUG presents a Seminar on Google Wave – The new communication and collaboration platform on the web. Seminar Topics:

  • Introduction to Google Wave
  • Building Extensions to Google Wave
  • Building Gadgets – Walk through of building a Gadget
  • Building Robots – Walk through of building a Java based Robot
  • Using GWT (Google Web Toolkit) and EXT GWT to create polished Gadgets
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Submit a presentation proposal for the GNUnify Open Source conference

Every year, Pune plays host to a major open source conference, GNUnify, organized by the Pune Linux Users Group and SICSR (Symbiosis Institute of Computer Studies and Research). To quote the website

GNUnify is one of the top international free/open source software conferences in India. Click on the logo to see all PuneTech articles about GNUnify
GNUnify is one of the top international free/open source software conferences in India. Click on the logo to see all PuneTech articles about GNUnify

GNUnify symbolizes the philosophy behind Free/Open Source Software (FOSS). It makes an effort to unify and strengthen the FOSS movement. Initiated in the year 2003, GNUnify has soared to become an international convergence of open minds. It brings together some of the world’s leading speakers to share their knowledge and experience, with students and developers.

It has 1-hour presentations on tech topics, 2-3 hour workshops, installfests, and “birds of a feather” discussion groups.

The CFP (i.e., call for papers, i.e., the call for presentation proposals) is currently open, and if you’ve done any work in any open source technology, you should consider submitting a presentation proposal. It helps the community – because more presentation proposals means that the organizers get a larger pool to select from, and can thus put on a higher quality conference. You could choose to do a presentation that is basic, targeted towards beginners and students, to initiate them into the world of open source, or if you have expertise in a specific field or FOSS software package, you can target your presentation to other professionals in the field who would like to learn from your experiences.

Submit a proposal. It takes very little effort right now. All you need to do is submit a one-paragraph abstract of what you’re going to talk about. The conference is on 19th and 20th Feb, in Pune, giving you enough time to prepare.

Why bother?

This PuneTech’s standard exhortation as to why PuneTech readers should submit proposals for such CFPs. We first used it for the CFP of the IndicThreads conference on Software Quality, and are repeating it here with minor changes:

  • GNUnify is a good conference.
  • If you’re accepted as a speaker, you get travel costs (upto Rs 5000, based on actuals) and accomodation. (All those reading PuneTech from outside Pune, grab this chance to visit the most happening tech community in India.)
  • Become famous: being a speaker at a national conference is good for visibility, and all engineers should strive for visibility. It’s very important. Almost as important as being a good programmer. (Maybe more?)
  • Help out a good Pune initiative. More submissions will improve the quality of the conference, and having a high quality conference in Pune improves the overall stature of Pune as an emerging IT powerhouse.

How

Didn’t I say it was easy?

What are you waiting for. Click

Innovations 2010: Event Update

Last Saturday, Pune played host to a number of science and technology innovators from around the country, as a part of the Innovations 2010 conference.

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. Click on the logo for other PuneTech articles about Innovations.

Overall it was an interesting conference, a little hat ke. There was much less software/IT/web-2.0 kind of stuff, and much more basic science and technology. Also, it was not all targeted towards startups; which means that they also highligh individual innovators’ ideas that are not necessarily going to become a big business (for example, a method for cleanliness at a railway station), and also some interesting ideas from larger companies (e.g. the rapid DFM review and collaboration solution for injection molding from Geometric). Such innovations are not normally included in places like proto or headstart.

I missed the keynote presentation by Sanjay Nayak of Tejas Networks. However, Abhijit Athavale has covered it on his blog. Excerpt:

The event was kickstarted with a keynote by Sanjay Nayak, CEO of Tejas Networks, which is a Bangalore based optical networking startup. Tejas, which has been around for the last 5 years or so, is profitable and has revenues close to $150m. That is quite an impressive feat from an Indian high-tech startup, selling products from India worldwide. It is also a shining example to the naysayers who keep on saying that Indian product companies cannot sell products in the US. I hope that more people follow Tejasâ lead and venture into the space. Sanjay mentioned that India itself is a great market for petrochemical and telecom markets, and if you design products that satisfy the needs of these markets, you will have the advantage of selling close to home in the markets you know; something that your gadzillion dollar competitor does not. That said, it is imperative that the products you build are international class; in other words, you must implement internationally standard processes and techniques to make this happen. One thing that is lacking in India is government support â by making a policy that Indian Govt agencies/companies must buy from Indian product companies if the product quality is on par, the government will give a significant boost to innovation in the high-tech space. Instead of innovating for MNCs, people will start innovating for their own companies.

The Main Course – The Innovations

Here is a list of the innovations that were presented. These are mainly short, one or two line descriptions of the main innovation. You’ll notice that there are a bunch of Pune companies in this list.

Electronically driven supercharger

Rajeev Ranadive, Automotive Robotics, Pune Company

Customers like powerful dynamic cars, but don’t want to pay for it. More accurately, they want extra power during acceleration or climbing. Not really required all the time. And turbochargers run all the time, which is a waste. Instead, they have a electrically driven supercharger which provides the extra power only when needed, and at low engine speeds, it charges the battery. Hence it require lower electrical input, and higher mechanical output.

This company was also at proto.in Pune, but here they presented a different innovation. Which is pretty cool.

HyCator Cavitating Reactor Engine

Anjan Mukherjee, HyCa Technologies

HyCa was pretty much a repeat of their proto.in, Pune, presentation, so not repeating it here.

Generating electricity from ocean waves.

S.G. Kanitkar, Enviro Abrasion Resistent Engineers Pvt. Ltd., Pune Company

Their system is called ANEESH (Adaptive Near-shore Energy Extraction and Supply Hydrokinator. This mechanism has lower initial set-up expenses (“capital costs”) than solar or biomass energy, and cost and capacity utilization factor is comparable to other renewable energy sources. They have a prototype that is 1.5m x 4m x 6.5m which generates 2 kW of power. They need collaborators for electrical systems and electronic controls to complete the full system. In addition, they want people who can liaise with government bodies to ensure that they get past the appropriate regulatory hurdles.

Avoiding crap at the railway station.

Rajendra Ladkat, individual inventor, Pune inventor

The current method is just a hole in the train compartment and the crap ends up on the tracks everywhere and anywhere, including the railway stations. Ravindra has invented a simple mechanism which ensures that the waste matter is discharged only when the train is going at high speeds, which is a much better place to discharge it than when the train is stationary. It is a simple vertical HDPE pipe, with sloping sides and two flexible flaps. The flaps open when the train speed goes about 40kmph. Trial was conducted in Pragati express in Jan 2009, and the trial was found to be satisfactory by all stakeholders. Economics: 9000 passenger trains with 40000 comparments (which means 1,60,000 potential installations). This totally costs 48cr (contrast with Rs. 4000 cr. allocated by government for green toilets.) He is looking for business collaborators.

Design for Manufacturability tool for CAD/CAM software

Bhaskar Sinha, Geometric Software, Pune Company (mostly)
DFM = Design for Manufacturability. Designers can check for manufacturability in their CAD tool itself. When the designer is creating a design in CAD, the tool will check and validation the design from a manufacturability point of view. It points out problem areas and indicates what constraint was violated by the design. Contextual help at this point gives the user information about best practices (and this can include knowledge from the customer company itself.) (@aparanjape thinks that this kind of functionality should be there in major CAD/CAM products, so it’s not really clear what the innovation here is.)

Non-duplicatable material for security (ID cards, etc)

Raman Nanda, Bilcare, Pune Company

NonClonable security technology, from Bilcare. Consider ID cards, driving licenses, ration cards, health cards, NREGA cards. Any of them can be duplicated. Bilcare has used nanomaterials and micromaterials to develop a material that has a unique “material fingerprint”. This is invisible to the naked eye, but machine readable. And since it is at the micro/nano scale, it is not duplicatable. It cannot be reproduced, even by the original manufacturer (or Bilcare). This technology can be integrated with any security technology, like barcodes, RFID, or magstrips. They claim this requires significantly lower total cost of ownership, since this technology does not require any electronic parts in the card. It requires the scanner (i.e. the device that is used to check the identity) to be connected to a central server.

Tree Climbing Device

Mushtaq Ahmed from Kashmir, and Sham Antoorkar from Ahmedabad

They have invented a simple mechanical (non-electronic) device that can be used by unskilled people to climb trees/poles/etc easily and safely and allows resting while climbing. Mushtaq invented the device and Sham make some changes to make it commercially viable. The plan is to launch it by March 2010.

Rotory variable compression ratio engine

Das Ajee Kamath, Gyatk

You can’t put petrol in a diesel car, or diesel in a petrol car. VCR = Variable Compression Engine, would allow you to put any fuel in any engine. And this is an idea that companies all over the world have been working on for 20+ years – but it has significant limitations. Gyatk has invented a rotory VCR, which overcomes the limitations. They have a working prototype, and patents in 40+ countries, and engagement with two major auto companies in the country.

Health emergency alert system for Seniors

Umang Salgia, Wellcore Corp. Pune Company?

A device that seniors can wear on their body and it can automatically detect emergency situations, or the person can manually activate it, and it sends an alert to the appropriate person/organization. It monitors vital signs, motion, blood pressure etc. And the alert also gives the location of where the emergency happened.

I think Wellcore has a development center in Pune. (Given that both founders are Pune folks, I’d guess that it is mainly a Pune company, but I cannot find any information on their website, or anywhere else on the web. Can somebody confirm?). It is interesting to note that Wellcore also presented at CES (the Consumer Electronics Show, at Las Vegas, the biggest electronics conference in the world) this year, and was chosen as one of the top ten products by this website.

Document sharing with remote control of secure information

Rahul Kopikar, Seclore Systems
A system that allows sharing of documents but where the original document creator retains control of the sensitive information in the document. At a later stage, if the document creator can revoke the permissions and the document will become unreadable.

You, me and Disaster, a card game for increasing disaster management awareness

Peeyush Sekhsaria, Handesign, Bangalore
There is a need to get individuals and communities involved in understanding disaster management. Hence this is a card game that allows people to understand disaster management in a fun settings. Serves like a facilitation tool for teachers, trainers, social workers etc.

Making rain – a low cost way of seeding clouds and causing rain

Shreehari Marathe, individual inventor, Nanded Maharashtra
Seeding clouds to cause rain involves spraying clouds with appropriate minerals. Conventionally done by aircraft. Shreehari invented a way of doing this by burning tyres and putting the salt on it. The smoke carries the salt to the clouds and results in rain. (For reasons I cannot pinpoint, this idea is causing a bad science alert for me. I wonder whether this idea has been proved under scientific, controlled conditions. It is possible that this whole idea suffers from confirmation bias, and other such statistical anomalies.)

Pune Open Coffee Club Meet: Startup Aspirants Mela – 16th Jan

What: Pune OpenCoffee Club meeting for all those interested in doing a startup and looking for co-founders and/or ideas
When: Saturday, 16th January, 10am
Where: Symbiosis Institute of Computer Studies and Research, Atur Centre, Model Colony. Map.
Registration and Fees: This event is free for all to attend. Register here: http://punestartups.ning.com/events/startup-aspirants-mela

Pune OpenCoffee Club - POCC Logo
POCC is an informal group of the Pune Startup ecosystem. It contains more than 1500 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

Startup Aspirants Mela

Sumedh Inamdar called this event with the following pitch:

I am a startup aspirant, and want to meet other people who are looking for co-founders and/or ideas. Can we all such people meet on a saturday?

Are you a domain expert who has a great business idea, and are looking for a co-founder who can handle the technology part? Are you a group of techies who are looking for a good sales+marketing person? Are you an enthusiastic youngster who would love to work on a startup idea but don’t have an idea yet, and all your existing friends want to continue their boring jobs at Infosys/Wipro?

Welcome. This event is made just for you. Just show up – no preparation required, no permission required, no registration required.

So far, about 35 people have confirmed, and another 15 have indicated that they might attend the meeting. The idea is for each hopeful to give a short pitch about themselves – their background, what sort of work/ideas/startups they’re interested in, and what kinds of co-founders they are looking for. After this is done, there will be time for mingling where people can try to find their startup soulmates.

Are you a person who thinks of Pune as a retirees paradise? In that case, start showing up at POCC meetings, including this one, to see the energy that Pune still has.

ISACA Pune Monthly Meet: Risk Assessment by Dr. Pramod Damle – 16 Jan

What: ISACA Pune meet. Risk Assessment by Dr. Pramod Damle
When: Saturday, 16th January, 6pm-8:30pm
Where: Damle Hall, Behind IndSearch Institute, Off Law College Road, Shivajinagar
Registration and Fees: Free for all to attend. No registration required

ISACA is a worldwide association of Information Security professionals dedicated to the audit, control, and security of information systems. Click on the logo to see other PuneTech articles related to ISACA.
ISACA is a worldwide association of Information Security professionals dedicated to the audit, control, and security of information systems. Click on the logo to see other PuneTech articles related to ISACA.

Risk Assessment

Risk Assessment (RA) is an integral part of information security program for any organization. It presupposes business impact analysis and embraces all the major assets/ operations. The RA process consists of a detailed study of the threats and vulnerabilities and the resultant exposure the organization faces. It opens the choices of risk treatment (RT) like mitigation, acceptance, transference etc. Hence, a successful RA focuses the limited resources of an organization on the proper risk treatment and thus brings down the residual risk to the level of acceptable risk, thus in turn paving way for the information security governance.

About the Speaker – Dr. Pramod Damle

Dr. Damle is a freelance adviser, evangelist and researcher in information security governance, and has been a member of ISACA, Pune chapter from 2000. For the past 25 years, he has been balancing his IT career between practice and preaching. On the one hand he has contributed to IT missions of MNCs like State Bank of India, Oil India Ltd, Parametric Technologies, L&T, etc., while on the other hand he has been catering to academia like IIMs, IGNOU, Pune university, Symbiosis, etc. at PG/ Doctoral level. He also teaches several IT certification programs of ISACA, ISC2, ISO, QAI. Earlier Dr. Damle worked as IT manager at Bank of Maharashtra, Director at MODVIN, Professor and IT Head at YASHADA and head of education services at MIEL, where he architected one year full-time post-graduate program in information security management (PRISM) that is being run domestically and abroad.

With articles/ research papers for ‘Control’, Computers Today, etc. and a few IT books to his credit, he has designed a series of PC-based games on serious IT topics. Dr. Damle has earned various degrees in Maths, Laws, Commerce, Computers and professional certifications like ISO9001 Tick IT Lead Auditor, ISO27001 Lead Auditor, CAIIB, CISA, CISM, CISSP, SSCP, CSSLP, GIAC GSLC, PMP and PhD in information security.

Pune (Microsoft Technologies) User Group’s Developer Summit – Jan 16

What: Pune (Microsoft Technologies) User Group’s Developer Summit
When: Saturday, 16 January, 9:00am-5pm
Where: Dewang Mehta Auditorium, Persistent Systems Ltd., 402, Bhageerath, Senapati Bapat road. Update: venue changed to Ashwamedh hall, Erandwana Gaothan, off karve road, near nal stop, Pune
Registration and Fees: This event is free for all to attend. Register here (requires silverlight)

PUG is Pune's user group for Microsoft Technologies. Click on the logo to see all PuneTech articles related to PUG.
PUG is Pune's user group for Microsoft Technologies. Click on the logo to see all PuneTech articles related to PUG.

PUG Developer Summit

PUG Developer Summit 2010 is an event for developers to share, collaborate and meet up with like minded technology enthusiasts. to connect with industry gurus on all upcoming technologies like MOSS 2010, VS2010, Silverlight 4, WCF 4 along with first time in Pune a session on “Concept Visualization” by Sanjay Vyas…

Detailed Agenda:

9:00 to 9:30 Registration
9:30 to 10:45 Session I Concept Visualization Sanjay Vyas
10:45 to 11:00 Tea Break
11:00 to 12:15 Session II Visual Studio 2010 Farzin Faramarzi & Maheshkumar N
12:15 to 1:30 Session III MOSS 2010 Amol Vaidya
1:30 to 2:30 Lunch Break
2:30 to 3:45 Session IV Silverlight 4 Vikram Pendse
3:45 to 5:00 Session V WCF 4 Mahesh Sabanis

PuneChips talk: A Bright Solar Future, by Madhu Atre, President Applied Materials India – 16 Jan

What: Talk about Solar Energy, by Madhu Atre, President of Applied Materials India
When: Saturday, 16 January, 10am to 12noon
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.

PuneChips is a PuneTech special interest group on semiconductors, VLSI, embedded, and EDA. Click on the Logo to see all PuneTech articles about PuneChips
PuneChips is a PuneTech special interest group on semiconductors, VLSI, embedded, and EDA. Click on the Logo to see all PuneTech articles about PuneChips

India – A Bright Solar Future

As global warming begins showing its bad side, it is important for everyone to harvest new and renewable sources of energy. Applied Material is and continues to be a pioneer in the field of solar energy. Madhu will talk about trends in solar technologies, viability, opportunities (especially software/services related) from an India perspective

About the speaker – Dr. Madhu Atre

Dr. Madhusudan V. Atre (Madhu) is the President & Managing Director of Applied Materials India. As the leader of the Applied Materials India management team, he is responsible for strategy and operations in India; and ensures alignment, coordination and execution of all product development, business, and operational activities. Dr. Atre represents Applied Materials in India to the employees, customers, business partners, local and central government officials. He also provides executive leadership at all the India sites, and is the Applied Materials India legal representative. With over 24 years of experience in the semiconductor and computer industries after his PhD, Dr. Atre has also donned other technical, management and leadership roles â as the Vice President and Managing Director of LSI India, founding Managing Director and Vice President of Agere Systems India, founding director of Lucent Technologies Microelectronics Division, and several management positions at Texas Instruments India, and Indiaâs Defence R&D Organization

Dr. Atre has published/authored more than 40 technical papers/articles in reputed journals/conferences, as well as thought leadership articles on semiconductor and solar industry; and also lectured in many technical and industry forums. He holds a 5 year integrated M.Sc. degree in physics from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, and a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bangalore. He has been a research scientist at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (Mumbai), Physical Research Laboratory (Ahmedabad), and universities in the US and Italy.

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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Broadband in India – Praying for better times

(This article, by Pune-based Srinivasa Addepalli is taken from his blog and republished here with permission.)

India has about 7 million broadband subscribers, broadband, which by the way is defined in India at >=256Kbps: just about enough speed to let you experience the new, emerging Internet. The Indian Govt. had declared 2007 as the year of broadband, and a target of 9mn subs was set for the year. Even two years later, we are way behind! Just so you know, China has over 80 million broadband subscribers.

This article is a guest-post by Pune-based Srini Addepalli, head of strategy at Tata Co
This article is a guest-post by Pune-based Srini Addepalli, head of strategy at Tata Co

Why is a nation such as ours, IT superpower and aspiring global superpower, so poor when it comes to broadband penetration?

Very Poor Fixed Line Infrastructure

Most countries that have a high broadband penetration have (a) high wireline penetration, and / or (b) robust cable infrastructure. Simply speaking, if you do not have the basic infrastructure, you cannot provide a superior service such as broadband. Unfortunately for us, neither of these two conditions exist in India.

There are about 37 million fixed lines, of which only about 30% – about 10mn – are even capable of providing broadband. In recent years, there has been almost no investment in increasing and/or improving the quality of fixed line infrastructure. The country has added more than 400million wireless connections in the last 8 years, as against none in the fixed line space. While lack of focus on wireleine by the incumbents, BSNL and MTNL is an important factor, the blame must really be borne by the regulatory and policy regime which has not created an environment to encourage competition (and thereby, investment) in fixed line infrastructure / services in the country. The TRAI had recommended unbundling of the local loop as a step towards limited competition, but as has now almost become a norm, the TRAI recommendations were not accepted by the DoT.

Less said the better about cable infrastructure. It is a highly fragile and completely unregulated cobweb of many thousands of independent networks. It will take an investment of at least Rs 200 billion to upgrade the cable last mile to make it 2-way and broadband capable. Nobody, it appears, is willing to take that challenge up.

No Encouragement to Competition

It is well-recognized that the mobile revolution in India has been driven primarily by competition: at least 6-7 operators across the country. Private operators were licensed years before the incumbents were allowed to enter the mobile market; several steps have been taken towards creating a level playing field for all the licensed mobile operators. On the other hand, in broadband, there is absolutely no policy measure to encourage private operators to enter and compete; this in spite of the fact that none of them have any last mile infrastructure to speak of, and therefore, require considerable support in the initial years.

The incumbents that are riding on public-funded fixed line infrastructure have – in almost a predatory manner – dropped tariffs so much that India has, at the same time, the lowest broadband ARPU and the poorest broadband penetration in the world! Wireless broadband (read 3G & WiMax) is generally expected to become the competitive alternative – but there has simply been no urgency in creating the policy environment to encourage wireless. Spectrum â the essential ingredient to rolling out wireless networks â has not been made available for Broadband; the proposed spectrum auctions have been postponed several times in the last 2 years.

Can something be done to salvage the situation?

Unfortunately, in the short term, I see no option for the customers and private operators. During 2010, the incumbents will strengthen their dominance in the broadband market (for whatever it is worth); private operators will half-heartedly roll out parallel copper / cable networks and will be plagued with quality issues. If spectrum auctions happen in Jan-Feb 2010 as currently envisaged, 3G and WiMax services should become available in most metros towards the second half of the year.

The Broadband market will have to wait till 2011 for true competition, high quality and innovative services – available in all major towns and cities. But the rest of the world will not stay still. Singapore is experimenting with getting 100Mbps to every home by 2012; we hope to get to about 1Mbps in the top 100 towns by then.

Every year, since 2005, I have been hoping that the next year would be the year that broadband becomes widely available in India. I have been proven wrong before; I pray that things change this time around.

About the Author – Srinivasa Addepalli

Srini Addepalli has been dreaming of a Broadband revolution in India for years, in his professional capacity as the head of strategy at Tata Communications and due to his personal enthusiasm for all things technology. You can find him on Twitter here.

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IndicThreads conference on Software Quality – Call for Presentation Proposals

IndicThreads has put out a call for submissions from potential presenters for their first conference on Software Quality, to be held in Pune on 5th and 6th March. If you’ve done any work in tools, processes, programs for testing, you should submit an abstract of your proposed talk.

Why Bother?

indicthreads logo small

  • IndicThreads runs good conferences. See Dhananjay Nene’s report on the Java conference that IndicThreads had in Pune last month.
  • If you’re accepted as a speaker, you get a free pass to the conference.And free hotel stay if you’re from out of town. (All those reading PuneTech from outside Pune, please raise your hands.)
  • Become famous: being a speaker at a national conference is good for visibility, and all engineers should strive for visibility. It’s very important. Almost as important as being a good programmer. (Maybe more?)
  • Help out a good Pune initiative. More submissions will improve the quality of the conference, and having a high quality conference in Pune improves the overall stature of Pune as an emerging IT powerhouse.

Why You?

I’m willing to bet that many people reading this will think – but I am not an expert. Not true. If you’ve spend a couple of years working on some specific aspect of testing, chances are that you’ve acquired expertise that you can present and help improve the understanding of others. You don’t have to have done ground-breaking research. Have you adopted a new tool that came out recently? Talk about it, because others will not have experience with its use. Have you used an old tool in a new way? Definitely submit a proposal. The others in this field would love to hear of this new wine in an old bottle. Have you figured out some new process for making your quality assurance team more productive, or less buggy? (Hey, you of all people should know that we can do testing/QA/debugging on people too, right!?)

Just because you think you are not the Einstein of Quality, does not mean that you should not submit a proposal. If there is something interesting that you’ve spent your time on in the last year or two, and if you think that 5 other people doing a job exactly like yours would benefit from what you learned – then you should (no, actually, you must) submit a proposal.

And, since recently PuneTech has been thinking about how to involve students in industry, here another idea. If you’re a student and you have ideas on how the Software Quality industry can get students more interested in this field, here is your chance to make your idea to a large roomful of professionals in this field who’ll listen to you, and maybe a few of them will actually do something about it. We already know that students can come up with interesting, well thought out proposals, so here’s your chance.

So go, click submit. All you need right now is a one-paragraph proposal of what your talk will be about. Just do it.

Logistics – what, how, when

The last date for submission is 10th Jan, so please head over the the CFP and submit your entry using the form at the end of that page.

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. Automation Testing
  2. Performance Engineering
  3. Component Testing
  4. Agile Testing
  5. Embedded Systems Testing
  6. Product vs. Application Testing
  7. Games Testing
  8. Security Testing
  9. ATM Testing
  10. Emerging tools and technologies
  11. Reliability Testing
  12. Testing Middleware Applications
  13. SOA Testing
  14. Database Testing
  15. Protocol Testing
  16. Compliance Testing
  17. Software Usability Testing

Submission

  • Please note that submissions aimed at promoting specific organizations or products will not be accepted.
  • All sessions will be between 50-90 minutes.
  • The audience consists mostly of senior testers and test 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 over email.
  • All submissions must include two session abstracts.
  • Please provide as much detail as possible in the session abstract, including the target audience.
  • 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.
  • Speaking at an IndicThreads event gets you recognition as a subject expert.

Important Dates

  • Submission Deadline – 10th Jan 2010
  • Selection Mails – 31st Jan 2010
  • Conference Dates – 5 and 6 March, 2010

More details

For more details, see the conference website

Startup Saturday Pune: Mobile & VAS – 9th Jan

What: Startup Saturday Pune featuring Pune’s mobile startups pitching to a Panel of Experts
When: Saturday, 9th January, 3pm-5:30pm
Where: Pravara Centre for Management Research & Development, Off Senapati Bapat Road, Near Patrakar Nagar
Registration and Fees: This event is free for all to attend. Register here.

Details

Click on the logo to see all PuneTech posts about Startup Saturday
Click on the logo to see all PuneTech posts about Startup Saturday

Startup Saturday Pune 3 is dedicated to Mobile vas and apps. We have selected companies building products for the mobile space, sms, value added services, voice recognition, apps for iphone and android.

The startups that are presenting are

  1. Mobikon Technologies (Samir Khadepaun)
  2. SMSONE (Ravi Ghate)

And we are discussing with a few interesting startups in the same
space. Nominations and suggestions are welcome.

These startups will make 5 minute lightening pitches followed by questions, suggestions, feedback, ideas and encouragement from our expert panel. Our panel of experts will include people from telecom, mobile handset companies, investors, IT companies, media and marketing experts. As said earlier, nominations, suggestions are welcome.

Send your nominations, suggestions, feedback to sandeep@actonbiotech.com. +91 98900 42670.