All posts by Navin Kabra

Pune Students – Become a Wikipedia Campus Ambassador

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Wikipedia wants lots of Indian students to be involved in contributing to the Wikipedia, and with this in mind they are starting an ambitious program in India. And this will start with a large-scale, high-impact pilot in Pune.

The basic idea is to recruit “Wikipedia Campus Ambassadors” in Pune, who will find, recruit and train students to be Wikipedia editors, and organize campus events around Wikipedia activities.

This is planned across all colleges and universities in the Pune municipal area. It is not focused on any one academic subject area – but cover as wide a range of subjects as possible. Those in India but outside Pune can register their interest in applying, and are welcome to attend training sessions that the Wikimedia Foundation will conduct in Pune (details of which will be provided to successful applicants.)

This is your chance to change the world, and at the same time significantly improve your resume.

Details are as follows.

About Wikipedia Campus Ambassadors

This will be unpaid, volunteer work. You will need to work approximately 3 to 5 hours per week, through the semester. You can be an undergraduate/graduate/post-graduate student, faculty/staff member, or anyone geographically close to the college/university – the main qualification is that you must enjoy teaching people and spreading your passion for free knowledge.

Last year, there were Wikipedia Campus Ambassadors in Harvard University, Georgetown University, Indiana University, UC Berkeley, and many other schools in the United States. Now, for the first time, they are expanding outside the USA, and Pune has been chosen as a test for this program.

Typical Activities for a Wikipedia Campus Ambassador

Before the term starts: Help identify and recruit instructors on your campus who would be interested in incorporating Wikipedia-editing into their classes.

Before and during the term start:

  • Work with interested instructors on your campus in adapting existing teaching methods to include Wikipedia-editing.
  • Provide face-to-face training and support for the participating instructors’ students on Wikipedia-related skills. This means doing in-class presentations, possibly holding office hours, and in general providing in-person mentorship for students. Prior Wikipedia expertise is not required for the role, as the Wikimedia Foundation will provide training for all Campus Ambassadors – but would be useful
  • Organize engaging on-campus events to encourage editing (and continued editing) of Wikipedia
  • Think of creative ways for promoting Wikipedia in your region
  • Help recruit new Wikipedia contributors on campus, possibly through the creation of a Wikipedia student club
  • Set up a Wikipedia help desk on your campus
  • Be a point of contact for new contributors and channel the feedback to the Wikimedia Foundation and its chapters
  • Recruit and train new Wikipedia Campus Ambassadors

What do Wikipedia Ambassadors get?

  • Increase your knowledge about Wikipedia, free knowledge, and collaborative writing
  • Learn and develop communication, teaching, and leadership skills
  • Create a name for yourself and network with a great team of people within one of the most significant online communities ever
  • Work closely with college/university teachers/professors
  • Receive Wikipedia swag (merchandise: maybe T-shirts, maybe mugs) to give out at events.
  • Receive funding for running events for food, soft drinks, etc.
  • Potentially receive sponsorship to other Wikimedia events, such as Wikimania

Requirements – Who can apply?

You must have:

  • Passion for Wikimedia’s values and mission
  • Patience with people who have varying levels of computer literacy
  • Knowledge about how to edit Wikipedia or the willingness to acquire this knowledge
  • Understanding of how teachers/professors design teaching programs, or the willingness to gain this understanding
  • Ability to transform complex technical information into actionable steps for beginners
  • Ability to give positive, encouraging and clearly targeted feedback to the people you interact with
  • Ability to motivate and excite others
  • Genuine interest in teaching people and organizing events
  • Convenient transportation access to the university campus
  • Willingness to be a public figure (for example, to make known the connection between your real name, your Wikipedia username, and your face. Your role is providing face-to-face guidance to professors and students, so comfort with being “public” is very important)

How to Apply

Interested? Please complete the application and email it to

  • ambassadors-ind [at] wikimedia [dot] org – Campus Ambassador Program India

For any questions, email Annie Lin, the Campus Team Coordinator, at alin [at] wikimedia [dot] org.

More details

See the Wikipedia Campus Ambassador webpage for full details.

Please spread the word

If you know enthusiastic, passionate students who want to do something more interesting with their life than just working in an outsourcing company, please forward this to them. Or maybe you know professionals who’re so interested in education that they spend significant time every week in a University – they would make good ambassadors too.

We owe it to the students of Pune, and to ourselves to make this program a resounding success.

TechWeekend #9 (#tw9): Game Development

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If you like programming, then you cannot miss TechWeekend. This month (actually, 10am tomorrow), we have TechWeekend 9 (#tw9) which will focus on Game Development.

A Programmers’ introduction to Game Development

By Girish Dhakephalkar, http://shoonyagames.com

An introduction to various elements involved in game development with a focus on programming. This talk would explain the structure of a game development team and how the roles fit into the overall plan. It will also explain the basic ideas and concepts related to game programming, including an overview of a game engine and its working. Lastly, it will highlight the kind of skill-sets required by someone who wants to make it as a game programmer.

Game Development using XNA

By Dhaval Faria.

Microsoft XNA is the game development framework (tools and runtime) used for building games for Xbox 360.

Microsoft XNA is a set of tools with a managed runtime environment provided by Microsoft that facilitates computer game development and management. XNA attempts to free game developers from writing “repetitive boilerplate code” and to bring different aspects of game production into a single system.

2-D Game Development for WinPhone7 using Sliverlight

By Mayur Tendulkar.

Mini-Barcamp

We will have about 90 minutes for a session on whatever topics people in the audience feel like talking about. Ideally, we would like you to give a 10 minute lightning talk on a tech topic you’re really interested in (not necessarily game development). It would work best if you’ve prepared beforehand, but that is not a requirement.

About Techweekend

TechWeekend Pune is a volunteer run activity. TechWeekend talks are held on the 3rd Saturday of every month from 10am to 2pm at Sumant Moolgaonkar Auditorium, Ground Floor, ICC Trade Center, SB Road. Each TechWeekend event features 3 or 4 talks on advanced technical topics. These events are free for all to attend. See PuneTech articles about past techweekends to get an idea of the events.

Join the techweekend mailing list to keep in touch with the latest TechWeekend activities.

About the Sponsor – Microsoft

Many thanks to Microsoft for sponsoring the venue for Techweekend. Microsoft wants to get more closely involved with the tech community in Pune, and particularly the open source enthusiasts – with the intention of making everybody aware that their cloud technologies (like Azure) actually play well with open source, and that you can deploy your php applications, your drupal/joomla installs on Azure.

Fees and Registration

TechWeekend #9 happens tomorrow, Saturday 10am-2pm, at Sumant Moolgaokar Auditorium, Ground Floor, Wing A, MCCIA Trade Towers, ICC Complex, SB Road.

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

PuneChips Event: Advanced System Verilog Tips with Cliff Cummings – 19th April

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Abhijit Athavale writes:

SystemVerilog Guru Cliff Cummings is back in town and he will be holding another seminar on April 19th at MCCIA’s Sumant Moolgaokar Auditorium, ICC Towers, Senapati Bapat Road from 4:00pm to 7:30pm. Most recently, Cliff was here in November 2009 and this seminar gives a great opportunity for engineers to re-engage with him.

The topics covered will include:

  • New UVM 1.0 overview and comparison to OVM
  • Important OVM and UVM phasing
  • Secrets in mastering OVM and UVM
  • Graceful termination of tests in OVM and UVM with emphasis on the objection mechanism
  • Some of Cliff’s favorite SystemVerilog tips and tricks
  • Some early UVM techniques and best practices

This event is co-sponsored by Qlogic and Cadence who I must thank profusely on behalf of the PuneChips community. It is not very often that internationally renowned experts visit our city and hold free seminars, but QLogic and Cadence have made it possible. So, I encourage everyone who has any interest in SystemVerilog to attend and participate.

This event is completely free, but registration is required. Please visit this link to register and view the agenda.

Startup Strategy Discussions with Sramana Mitra – 17th April

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Sramana Mitra, a serial entrepreneur with 2 successful exits, consultant with over 80 companies, and the founder of the 1M/1M is in town this weekend and, in association with Persistent Systems, will hold an event that every entrepreneur should probably visit.

The 1M/1M initiative, was started with the goal of helping one million entrepreneurs reach $1 million in revenues and beyond. The event on Sunday will have Sramana Mitra’s keynote address discussing the 1M/1M Methodology: Bootstrapping, Positioning and Lean Startups, followed by the opportunity to ask questions. Then entrepreneurs can participate in a public strategy roundtable with Sramana to receive some real time coaching and answers to questions about their startup ventures. Up to seven entrepreneurs will be able to pitch their businesses to Sramana Mitra during this session.

The schedule for this program is as follows:

  • 2:00 -2:30 pm : Dr. Anand Deshpande introduces Sramana Mitra.
  • 2:30 -3:00 pm : Keynote Address by Sramana Mitra, topics : bootstrapping, positioning, lean startups.
  • 3:00 – 3:30 pm : Q&A on the keynote address.
  • 3:30 – 4:30 pm : Live Strategy Roundtable with Pune startups.
  • 4:30 – 5:00 pm : Q&A with audience/Sramana discussing the EJ Methodology
  • 5:00 – 6:00 pm : Networking

If you’d like to pitch, send Maureen (maureen@sramanamitra.com) an email.

1M/1M will be working with Microsoft in helping entrepreneurs prepare for the Microsoft Bizspark’s India Startup Challenge. Girish Joshi from Microsoft will be attending the roundtable and scouting companies with Sramana Mitra for the challenge.You can find more about the challenge here

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

PuneChips Event: An Overview of RFID – 16 April

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PuneChips, the community for all those interested in semiconductor design and applications presents an Overview of RFID by Ashim Patil, on 16th April, at Venture Center, NCL, Pashan Road, from 10:30am to 12-noon.

Abstract of the talk – Radio Frequency Identification

Product, people and document identification is now a huge challenge. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) offers an active ID mechanism that requires no intervention on the part of the user. This presentation will introduce the RFID technology, positioning and its variants. The speaker will also introduce Near Field Communication (NFC) and its differences with regular RFID. RFID and NFC applications across several verticals in India will also be discussed.

About the speaker – Ashim Patil

Mr. Ashim A Patil is the MD & CEO of Infotek Software & Systems Pvt Ltd., also known as i-TEK. Under his leadership i-TEK is one of the leading RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) system integration companies in India. i-TEK has several live RFID sites across verticals like Manufacturing, Banking, Education and Healthcare. i-TEK has to its credit RFID applications like File & Document Tracking, Asset Management, Stores Management, Automatic Vehicle Identification, HNI Tracking and many more, deployed at leading organisations in India.

Mr. Patil has completed his engineering degree from University of Pune in 1998. Fresh out of college, he began his entrepreneurial journey starting an Aptech franchisee which he sold in 3 yrs. After that, he took over an ailing software company in Pune which later on became today’s successful i-TEK under his able guidance. He shifted the focus to RFID when not many were even aware what the acronym stands for.

About Venture Center

Entrepreneurship Development Center (Venture Center) – a CSIR initiative – is a not-for-profit company hosted by the National Chemical Laboratory, Pune. Venture Center strives to nucleate and nurture technology and knowledge-based enterprises by leveraging the scientific and engineering competencies of the institutions in the Pune region in India. The Venture Center is a technology business incubator specializing in technology enterprises offering products and services exploiting scientific expertise in the areas of materials, chemicals and biological sciences & engineering.

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.

For more information, see the PuneChips website at http://punechips.com, and/or join the PuneChips mailing list: http://groups.google.com/group/punechips. Please forward this mail to anybody in Pune who is interested in renewable energy, solar technologies, semiconductors, chip design, VLSI design, chip testing, and embedded applications.

Fees and registration

This event is free and open for anybody to attend. No registration required.

RuralRelations.com – harnessing IT to help villages

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Gandhiji once said India lives in her villages. The current times see a march towards converting the villages into industry land rather than sustaining the essence of villages with new technology. Pune based Pradeep Lokhande, who himself hails from Wai village (Satara), decided to dream big and reach out to the villages to realise his dreams. The result, Rural Relations, is an organisation that harnesses IT to develop villages.

Lokhande went about the basics alongs the lines of the Mahatma again:

“I embarked on a journey of discovery, to find out what constitutes the real India. Though I myself hail from a village, I knew that deep down there’s more to life than what I had seen or lived myself. I wanted to know the essence of the various traditions, cultures and soak in its thinking. It was a journey of 40,000 villages of which I have personally visited 4000, across the country. I tried to understand rural India’s administration methodologies, markets or the bazaar-haat systems and the process of the education system. In the process of my journey, I established direct contact with opinion makers in villages and started recording obscure details of the local economy. And in 1996, I made my first customers, Tata Tea and Parle to delve in the data that I had collected. Since then there has been no turning back.”

After that, Lokhande decided to take the computer revolution to the villages. The intention was not to make computer literates of people but at least to get them to touch, feel and try computers. So he began to install used computers in villages, particularly in secondary schools, where the interest and curiosity levels were very high. When he personally could not find the means and finance to provide infrastructure, he appealed to individuals, organizations and corporates to contribute used machines. Today he has been instrumental in installing 600 computers across 540 villages.

What I found most interesting in Lokhande’s philosophy was the concept of the Non-resident Villager, which he has turned into a movement to raise ideas, funds and hands for development. The idea is to get people from cities to adopt a village (typically a village that they have some past connection to), and use this network of NRVs to help the villages. “Each one of us is an NRV, for our roots do, in some way, come from the villages. So as an NRV, we can always reach out, support and contribute something to the development of rural India.” says Lokhande and it rings really true. This is a concept which is in tune with the concept of the NRI and offers a person a chance to lend a helping hand to what once gave him a life, if not in this generation, then to the generations before that. Roots matter, in India at least.

Those interested in participating in the NRV scheme can get in touch at nrv@ruralrelations.com.

Lokhande has more active concepts in execution under Rural Relations. Take a look at his next concept, Village Developers, these are over 300 trained local village youths across 9 states and most of them are connected with mobile phones and emails to facilitate all ground activities.

Or the concept of rural marketing he employs called The Rural Barometer, which is ‘experience backed by cutting-edge technology’; live, dynamic, and regular information, by region and by state, which is subscription-based to help understand the villager like never before, gain valuable insights, learn about competition, distribution and empowers one to forecast trends. Large multinationals like Hindustan Lever, Reuters, and even Microsoft have used Rural Relations’ expertise in this area.

Then there is the library movement, the Gyan-Key, which makes a library in every rural secondary school a reality. It is a unique concept – a library of the students, for the students and by the students. The library will be run by one of the girls (Gyan-Key monitor) from that village studying in class VI. Each library to start with will have minimum 150-200 books in that local language covering various subjects. To instil a sense of ownership, students will be encouraged to donate books, (regardless of their value) for ‘their’ library on their birthday, creating a feeling of belonging. The Rural Talent division is a talent bank endeavour for the villages under the umbrella.

Lokhande himself is “from very humble background” he claims and has done his graduation B.Com externally and admits to have “taken a less travelled path”. His proportions for investment of time and money are as clear as his concepts for development, “After 2000, I have been investing 40% for business, 40% for professional social activity & 20% for teaching”

I had a curiosity to find what he considered the greatest achievement ever since Lokhande started Rural Relations? To be sure, he has a clear and ready answer to that too. “In professional achievement, it’s a case study on rural relations in Philip Kotler’s book and in personal & social achievement – I have more than 6,00,000 letters from villagers & the satisfaction I see in the eyes of the students from rural areas.”

He has a team in place to handle the essentials, 13 people in office staff & 31
associates as village developers.

So Lokhande, where do you see yourself five years down the lane?

“Our goal for the next 5 years is to reach to all feeder villages of India, create 5,000 videos of changing villages & minimum 10,000 Gyan-Key libraries”

Ambitious? Not at all, if there is a will, there is not just one way, but many.

My Experience at the IndicThreads Conference on Software Quality

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(This post by Abhay Bakshi, a techie who has recently moved to Pune, is about the IndicThreads Conference on Software Quality that was held in Pune recently. This post first appeared on DZone, and is reproduced here with permission.)

Typically, it was about a week’s planning before I got to attend the IndicThreads conference.  I didn’t know that the conference was taking place on Friday until I got an invite by Harshad Oak through LinkedIn.  I took permission from my authorities at my work place, took Friday off and was looking forward to this 2-day conference in the city of Pune, India.

I had attended (TSSS 2003, USA), presented at (FIE 97, USA), and written about (NFJS 2005, USA) conferences in the USA — but had never attended one in India, specifically in Pune.  Honestly, I was eager to.

Expectations

From my background in attending conferences in the USA, the expectations were high in my mind — the glamour, the large-size attendance, the goodies and the prizes to receive, the signed copies of books from authors, the networking and food (!) for two consecutive days.

On many of these fronts, Q11 by IndicThreads delivered and delivered well!  Yes, they did a pretty good job indeed.

Benefits

Benefits to receive are up to the individual, I believe — how much you want to take away.  That includes the speakers too.  In USA, I had paid $675 USD from my pocket to attend an NFJS weekend show and my employer was also surprised (pleasantly) then. But even today, I benefit (because I choose to) from that attendance.  It becomes easier to get in touch with authors / speakers / fellow attendees.  That is just one benefit.  The other benefit is — from your regular everyday schedule, you get out and see in reality what other developers / IT engineers are doing.  That opens a whole new perspective and regains energies for you in multitude.

Who Hosted the Conference?

The Q11 conference was hosted by Harshad Oak (Rightrix Solutions).  Harshad is the first Java champion in India and has served and continues to serve the overall IT community in several ways.  For his achievements, he is not that old – in fact quite young. 🙂

The thought process, as put in by Harshad, could be felt all throughout the conference

The Actual Sessions!

Every session was little over an hour.  That was good so that an otherwise information overload could be avoided.  Timings of the speakers were awesome — plus it didn’t feel that the speakers were running a race against time at any point.

The conference covered the following topics (all slides available on Slideshare):

  • Image Based Testing – Application Technology Independent Automation (Girish Kolapkar)
  • Proving correctness of a multiplayer game server (Nirmalya Sengupta)
  • Continuous Integration: A Case Study (Vaibhav Kothari)
  • Cloud based Testing for Mobile Applications (Dada Mote)
  • Test Automation for Mobile Applications (Dipesh Bhatewara)
  • Test Automation on Android Using Robotium (Amit Dixit)
  • Testing Flash and Flex for Accessibility (Rashmi Aghor)
  • PerformFuzz the Web Interface (Aniket Kulkarni)
  • Keyword Driven Automation using Selenesse (Ameya Naik)
  • Platform Independent Migration Testing Framework (Vishal Harane)

All speakers and sessions were accommodated fine by Harshad and Sangeeta (his wife).

It would be unjust to pick only one speaker that stood outstanding — everyone did a great job (offered their 100% for the attendees).  The professionalism was at its best.  This was probably the first time in the last 15 years that I interacted so closely with professionals in the IT industry in India.  All this was a superb learning experience for me.

Particularly speaking, Dada Mote, just for his zeal to learn more and offer more, had done a fantastic job.  I was amazed to see that he was accompanied by his boss who arrived just to give Dada moral support.  They both drove in from Mumbai.  Dada knows what he is doing.

Again, I do not have any bias for any one speaker (don’t even know Dada Mote in person that well!), everyone did so very well for us.

Vishal Harane, for what he put together at his work place using ANT (just under 3 days), was simply a great experience to watch and learn from.  I can go on and on like this for every session, but the space is limited and I have to get back to my work as well.

My Comparisons with the Conferences in the USA

The comparisons with the conferences in the USA will loom over my mind, by default.  But I attribute a few things lacking to the growth aspect of conferences at IndicThreads.

My mind was tuned to having parallel sessions and being able to choose a session where I want to get trained.  At Q11, there was however only one big hall for learning!  I couldn’t think of many “lacking” points at all.  Harshad has good experience in arranging the shows.  The professionalism shown by speakers was one of the best, as I mentioned earlier.  The consistent slide formats, good designs, aspects on the content arrangement for maximum absorption by the slide readers, real-time Q & A sessions, quizzes and prizes were all welcome and gave a pleasant appeal to the overall event.

What Can be Better / New Ideas

An obvious general difference between East and West — usage of English (well, I struggle myself with arrangement and good choice of words, as you can see in this article) during presentation.  And so we do not need “perfect” skills, just slight modifications with an element of clarity transferred from that in the slides’ content to every sentence that you speak.  Again, that’s about clarity only and nothing about undertaking the usage of any fancy English.

When speakers implement (more) clarity during speeches, here is a new idea for this conference (just for the sake of it) –> Harshad can even think about live broadcasting of the conferences where people from outside India can join the live sessions.  Yes, Harshad can charge a fee for such attendance. 🙂

The Best Take-away Point

The best take-away point for me will be the personal interactions with the fellow attendees and speakers.  A few of the speakers are local to the Pune city, and therefore if I were to get / offer help at any point regarding new emerging topics, I can rush for a get-together to a place which is only at a drivable distance.

Harshad encourages local speakers to come out and respond to the RFPs (and participate).  Hopefully, in the future, there will be “parallel” sessions (!), offering choices of topics, at conferences like Q11.

Event: Knowledge Camp – 9th April

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There are 6 different tech/startup related events happening in Pune this Saturday (see PuneTech Calendar for details). Yesterday, we wrote about DevCamp which is being held in Thoughtworks. Today, we bring you information about Knowledge Camp, which is being held in I2IT. They are both very similar events, with the difference that DevCamp is more likely to be interesting to hard-core developers, while Knowledge Camp will be interesting to a more general audience.

Knowledge Kamp is the variant of BarCamp, which is a free event, and it is all about learning, knowledge and experience sharing. Knowledge Kamp is going to be a semi-organized un-conference where participants would discuss and share knowledge / ideas / suggestions about Emerging Technology, Software, Networking, Management, Innovation, Web, Opensource, Entrepreneurship, Social Cause etc. (just anything which gives knowledge…) by giving sessions, personal interaction and there will be pre-scheduled sessions by experts across industry.

Why?

  • To offer a platform to individuals for Sharing Knowledge / Ideas
  • Bridging the gap between student and industry (Interaction among students, industry professionals & professors)
  • Open Networking
  • Open Learning Experience
  • Building Community

Who can participate?

Anyone with something to Share or with the desire to learn is welcome and invited to this Knowledge Kamp

Partial List of Speakers:

  • Self awareness a need for young minds – by Mr. Girish Kelkar , President , PMI pune chapter
  • Mind Programming – by Mr. Vikas Dikshit , NLP-Huna Expert
  • Session on Tips and tricks for interview by Mr. Rajeev Joshi , Delivery Manager, Tech Mahindra
  • Leadership and what it takes to a human being – by Dr. Mahesh Deshmukh , Certified Master Coach
  • Session on Cloud Computing by Mr. Dhirender Nirwani, IBM
  • Security In Social Networks – by Mr. Niranjan Reddy, Cyber Crime Expert – Pune Police
  • Session on LTE (4G) by Mr. Tridib Bhattacharjee, Chief Mentor, Astramind Consulting
  • Session on SAP by Mr. Madhu Iyer
  • Session on SOA & SM by Dr. Atanu Rakshit, I2IT

Details

Knowledge Camp will be on Saturday, 9th April 2011, from 9:00am to 5:30pm at International Institute of Information Technology (I2IT), Phase I, Hinjewadi.

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

For more details contact: Saumil 9579624150 or drop a mail to knowledgekamp@isquareit.ac.in

Event: DevCamp – April 9

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There are 6 different tech/startup related events happening in Pune this Saturday (see PuneTech Calendar for details). One of them is DevCamp which is being held in Thoughtworks. (Tomorrow, we’ll write about Knowledge Camp, which is being held in I2IT. They are both very similar events, with the difference that DevCamp is more likely to be interesting to hard-core developers, while Knowledge Camp will be interesting to a more general audience.)

Saager Mhatre writes about DevCamp:

DevCamp is an un-conference by the hackers, for the hackers and of the hackers. It is a species of BarCamp where software (code) and the construction thereof (hacking) is the core theme. The camp is a derivative of Open Space Technology and Barcamp and these roots are clearly visible in its unstructured approach and in that we subscribe to the The Law of Two Feet.

The very first DevCamp was put together a little over three years ago, and we’ve had a lot of fun taking this event to Chennai and then bringing it here to Pune. We hope to keep this trend going and see more local DevCamps sprouting.

The first DevCamp Pune of the year is on Saturday, the 9th of April 2011. Registrations are free and open to all, just add your details to the wiki at http://devcamp.in/index.php/Pune/2011/1/Registrations. The event is primarily sponsored by ThoughtWorks and will be hosted at their office in Yerawada, Pune[http://bit.ly/fvzJxG]. Global online monetization solutions provider Playspan has also chipped in this year.

Sessions at DevCamp assume a high level of exposure and knowledge on the part of your audience. We avoid ‘Hello World’ and how-to sessions which can be trivially found on the web. First hand war stories, in-depth analysis of topics and live demos are encouraged. Most sessions tend to be about 40 minutes long, plus 10 minutes for questions. Really popular talks can continue in the conference rooms and open spaces around the venue. We also run a stream of Lightning Talks, brisk 15 minute sessions that could spark off interesting discussions into the open spaces. This year we are also planning on a few Workshops in the event where campers can build and showcase interesting code around specific themes.

Topics discussed at the camp cover a wide range of subjects within the sphere of hacking. Here’s a small sampling of talks from previous events.

You can check out some of the sessions proposed for the upcoming event on our Proposals page and feel free to add some of your own!

To get updates about this and future DevCamps in Pune subscribe to our forum (https://groups.google.com/group/devcamp-pune). You can also track the DevCamp series on Lanyrd.

“Pune Tech Industry’s 40% decline” was an April Fools Day Prank

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Earlier today, we published an article saying Pune’s Tech Industry to decline 40% by 2020, Negligible startup activity – Vivek Wadhwa. As many of you guessed (and, hilariously, some of you did not) this article was an April Fools day prank.

An April Fool prank post is a tradition here at PuneTech. This year, Hetal Rach suggested the idea that a prank involving an article written by Vivek Wadhwa would be a good idea. Based on this, we made up the whole article, all the statistics and graphs, and all the expert comments too.

We would like to apologize to Vivek Wadhwa for misusing his name like this. We did not contact him before publishing the article, so obviously did not have his permission to do so. We were not even expecting to be noticed by Vivek, so imagine our shock when the first comment on the article was by Vivek himself, pointing out that:

I have no idea why my name is being used here and is linked to my website. I have performed no such research and don’t believe that the metrics used here are valid.

We held the comment in moderation (so as not to give the joke away), and quickly contacted him over email to explain the situation. We are very thankful to Vivek for taking the whole thing with a sporting spirit.

Just so that it is clear to everybody, Pune’s IT industry is NOT going to decline. I’m sure it will see phenomenal growth. As Vivek Wadhwa himself said in his comment:

Pune may not be able to grow at its current rates, but I know of no reason why it should decline. To the contrary, it has built a stable of experienced engineers that are likely to want to start companies. They will boost entrepreneurship in the region.

Amen.

I’m sure entrepreneurship in Pune is flourishing and will scale newer heights.

More clarifications:

  • All of the “expert comments” in the “Reactions in Pune” section were made up by us.
  • Santosh Dawara is not joining Infosys (as far as we know)
  • Arun Prabhudesai is indeed focusing on the education sector as part of My Open Campus, but has no intentions of introducing Java in primary education, and certainly does not want to upset the powerful Geography lobby.
  • MrShri does want you to come to FourSquare Day Pune 2011 and find out for yourself.
  • Sahil Khan would really like you to visit yolkshire and eat a silky omelette
  • And I haven’t really checked, but I am certain that Rohan Dighe would heartily agree with his own advice that one should drink beer, write code, and let other people worry about the future.

This time though, most people figured out that it was a prank, and hence there are very few real bakras in the comments section. However, many people who figured it out, used the comments section to unleash their creativity, so it is well worth a read.

Also check out our April Fools Day pranks from previous years.

Update: Vivek Wadhwa left a detailed comment on this post, which we’re including in the post here for wider visibility:

Navin, there is no reason why Pune can’t become a center for entrepreneurship–build it’s own version of Silicon Valley. All of the ingredients are there. There is a highly skilled workforce, ambitious people who have experience and a desire to change the world, and relatively good infrastructure.

What is needed is for experienced entrepreneurs to start mentoring the fledgling, and for the creation of networks where people congregate, exchange ideas, and help each other. This is how Silicon Valley works and how Indians have become so successful here. One out of seven tech startups in Silicon Valley have an India CEO or CTO–which is amazing considering that Indians constituted just 6% of the Valley’s working population in 2000.

Pune can lead the nation in entrepreneurship and become a competitor to Silicon Valley itself if it does things right. This will take a decade or so to achieve, but is possible. You need to have the community get together and make this happen (note: I said community–not government).

And yes, the world is such a small place because of the internet and social media tools like Twitter, that articles like this reach people like me. I saw the Tweets which mentioned my name and wondered why you were using this in vein.

Regards,

Vivek
http://www.wadhwa.com