All posts by Navin Kabra

Technical Writing: An alternate career for engineering students

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(This is a guest post by Mugdha Vairagade, a Senior Technical Writer based in Pune. Last year, as part of the techstart.in initiative we had organized a mentorship/industry projects program for engineering students without jobs (or whose jobs had been deferred). In this program, Mugdha pointed out that technical writing is an equally lucrative career for engineering students, and offered to provide mentorship for anyone interested. She took on a small number of students for mentoring, and all of them now have jobs in this area. We asked Mugdha to give PuneTech readers an overview of what Technical Writing as a career means, what skills are necessary, and how to go about preparing for a job in this area.)

Are you a Computer Science/Engineering undergrad? Or, have you graduated and are looking for alternatives to the usual Software Development or Testing career paths? If yes, have you considered technical writing as a possible career option? Chances are, you havenât; because you donât know enough about technical writing.

All you need to start a career in Technical Writing is an ability to grasp complex technical topics (which you should have, as an engineering student) and good English. (Photo credit: Writing! by Markus Rödder via Flickr)
All you need to start a career in Technical Writing is an ability to grasp complex technical topics (which you should have, as an engineering student) and good English. (Photo credit: Writing! by Markus Rödder via Flickr)

People still know so little about technical writing that they miss out on the lucrative job opportunities this profession provides. In this piece, I try to explain what technical writing is all about, and why you should consider this as a career option.

As organizations have started recognizing the need and importance of technical documentation, the demand for technical writers with all experience levels have gone up. The demand for technical writers, and consequently the pay packages, are now at par with (or even better than) that of the Software Development or Testing professionals.

Sounds like a cool career option? You want to know more about technical writing? Let’s start by finding out who these technical writers are and what they do.

Technical Writers are known by different names in different organizations; such as technical communicators, software documentation experts, or information developers.

A technical writer must have two important characteristics:

  • Strong technical background – That’s obvious, considering that a technical writer must understand complex technical concepts, applications, or services to be able to document them. For example, OSS/BSS systems, genomic-analysis application, or even web-services for airline reservation systems.
    You as a Computer Science/Engineering student have an edge over aspirants with different academic background in this regard, as you already have good exposure to technology.
  • Writing skills – Yes, a technical writer must have excellent command over written English. And that is plain business English, understandable by a global audience. So you are not expected to write in ornate or literary style, but in a simple concise one.
    Also, you must be able to edit your own and othersâ work to ensure simplicity, conciseness, and usefulness of the technical documentation. There are clearly-defined standards like Microsoft® Manual of Style for Technical Publications and The Chicago Manual of Style to help you learn how to write and edit a technical documentation.
    And of course, you must enjoy writing!

The typical job responsibility of a technical writer is writing software documentation; although technical writing can also involve hardware documentation and training program development. Some real-world examples of software/hardware documentation are:

  • Context-sensitive help for a desktop applications (accessed by pressing F1),
  • Administration Guide for a server
  • FAQ pages for a social-networking website
  • Online help for an image editor
  • User manual for a cell phone
  • Troubleshooting manual for ATM machines
  • and more..

To write software documentation, a technical writer first needs to study the corresponding software, and find out who are the intended audience for the documentation. The technical writer does so by interacting with the software (if possible), study function designs and developer documentation, and interview Subject Matter Experts (SMEs).

Then, the technical writer defines the overall structure of the documentation, and writes down what she learned in that structure. This documentation is then sent for review to the technical and editorial teams for review. If the technical and editorial teams approve the documentation, the documentation is published in desired format (Online Help, PDF, XML, even MS Word).

The most challenging part of this process is: understanding the technical jargon and translating it in documentation understandable and usable by the target audience. This also involves judging and including what the target audience must know to work the application, and excluding what is irrelevant to them. Again, your exposure to software development helps you understand what goes behind-the-scenes, and how it impacts the software behavior the target audience sees.

Sounds like challenging job profile? Then you may want to know whether you can get any training in technical writing. Various institutes are providing short-term diplomas/certificates in technical writing these days. However, most of such training programs focus only on documentation tools; for example, RoboHelp, FrameMaker, Visio etc.

When choosing a training program, you should select one that focuses on technical writing concepts and standards. Given your technical background, you will find the documentation tools much easier to learn. And if your technical writing concepts are good, organizations are willing to hire and train you in the specific tools they use (there are so many tools!).

Last year, I conducted weekend mentoring sessions over a month for aspiring technical writers, as a part of the TechStart’09 initiative. I mentored CS students with technical writing concepts like Documentation Development Life Cycle (DDLC), standards, editing, and basic word processing tools. The results were really encouraging with all students landing technical writing jobs by the end of the program.

If by now you have made up your mind to take up technical writing, you can start preparing yourself by studying Microsoft® Manual of Style for Technical Publications and The Chicago Manual of Style. Also, you can learn using the editing and reviewing features your word processor (for example, MS Word, OpenOffice Writer etc.) provides. You may also become member of the Technical Writers of India or Technical Writers in Pune groups to learn about new technical writing concepts, techniques, and job opportunities. Feel free to write to me at mugdha at techatom dot in if you are interested in the mentoring sessions.

About the Author – Mugdha Vairagade

Mugdha Vairagade is a Senior Software Documentation Expert having over 8 years of experience, with strong background in Software Development. She has authored numerous well-appreciated articles and white papers on IT-related topics. She has worked with reputed organizations including IBM, Intel, and CNET.

Mugdha presently works as a Senior Information Developer with a services company based in Pune, India. There she leads small teams, executing and delivering high-quality product documentation projects for diverse domains – including Life Sciences, Telecom, and E-commerce.

Mugdha’s expertise and interests include Java, Linux, XML, and Open Source, along with Wireless Application Development.

Mugdha is an avid Open Source supporter. She also volunteers for Linux Documentation Project, Mozilla Development Center, and Pune Giki.

For more details, see Mugdha’s website

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BarCampPune7 on 13th March: cloud computing, virtualization, security, and more

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It is time for a Pune Barcamp again. This will be the 7th edition -BarCampPune7.  And this time, we’re promised a number of interesting sessions. For example:

  • Anup Tapadia, Founder of TouchMagix will talk about the various awesome technologies and products they’re working on
  • Shivmohan Purohit on Cloud Computing
  • Nitish Dastane, Ashish Koche, Sanket Gajjam on Music information Retrieval Using Genetic Programming
  • Sandeep Bhanage on Virtualization
Barcamp@I2IT is on 13 March, Saturday. Anybody can attend, and its Free. A barcamp is a technology conference with a fluid agenda. Click on this picture to see all PuneTech posts about previous Barcamps
Barcamp@I2IT is on 13 March, Saturday. Anybody can attend, and it's Free. A barcamp is a technology conference with a fluid agenda. Click on this picture to see all PuneTech posts about previous Barcamps

And a whole bunch of other topics. And the beauty of barcamp is that many more topics will get added over the next few days.

But, really, you should go to speak about what you are working on. That is the whole point of barcamp.

If you don’t know what a barcamp is, then check out our post: What is a Barcamp, and why you should attend it (written just before the last barcamp)

In any case, here are details of this barcamp:

What: Barcamp@I2IT
When: Saturday, March 13, 9am-6pm.
Where: at I2IT International Institute of Information Technology
Registration and Fees: This event is free for all to attend. Anybody can attend. Register here.

Breast cancer awareness drive needs help from Pune’s techies – Please help

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(Monday, 8th March, is women’s day. PuneTech has decided to use that excuse to start a new series of articles highlighting inspiring stories about Pune’s women. For this purpose, we are roping in women techies who are active in the Pune tech community, and asking them to interview women who have great career stories and can serve as role models. Basically, by Pune’s women, of Pune’s women, for all of us. See this TechCrunch article by Vivek Wadhwa to get an idea of why this is important to do. We’re hoping that this will not just be an article or two in March, but a continuing series. We already have a number of interview candidates identified – but we need more interviewers. If you’re interested, please get in touch with us.

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

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

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

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

solo driving map
This is a map of the road trip that Dr. Ritu took across India with her daughter. They personally delivered breast cancer awareness workshops to over 26000 people in the remotest corners of India. Click on the map for a larger picture.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You mentioned a second way Pune volunteers can help you?

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

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

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

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

Contact details of Dr. Ritu Biyani

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

About the Author – Poonam Sharma

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

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

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PuneChips event: Wavelet Transform & its Applications in Image Processing – 6th March

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(This article about a PuneChips event is reproduced with permission from the PuneChips website)

What: Talk by Ganesh Bhokare on Wavelet Transform & its Applications in Image Processing
When: Saturday, 6th March 2010, 10:00 am to 12:00 noon.
Where: Venture Center, NCL Innovation Park, Pashan Road
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 image to see all PuneTech articles about PuneChips
An image of a two level wavelet transform. A PuneChips event, on the Wavelet Transform and its applications in Image Processing will be held in Venture Center on 6th March. PuneChips is a PuneTech special interest group on semiconductors, VLSI, embedded, and EDA. Click on the Logo to see all PuneTech articles about PuneChips. Image by Alessio Damato via Wikipedia.

Wavelet Transform & its Applications in Image Processing

In today’s multimedia wireless communication , major issue is bandwidth needed to satisfy real time transmission of audio and video data. The solution to this problem is to efficiently compress audio and video data for a given SNR. Wavelet transform is an evolving technology which offers far higher degrees of data compression compared to standard transforms such as DCT etc. In this talk we will be discussing concepts of wavelet transform and its applications to image compression and processing. The same can be extended to video processing.

About the speaker – Ganesh Bhokare

Ganesh Bhokare has over 15 years experience in using DSP audio, video and Embedded systems for Digital Media Processing. He is a PhD candidate at IIT Mumbai and currently in the process of defending his thesis. He has professional experience with  NXP, Conexant, TI and Cirrus Logic.

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.

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Volunteer for TEDxPune, help to put up the best Technology, Entertainment and Design show in Pune

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Update: At this meeting (which is now over), it was decided to form various sub-committees that will work on different aspects of TEDxPune. If you’re interested, please sign-up here.

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

What is TEDx?

This is a TED video of Sendhil Mullianathan talking about how we are unable to solve “simple” problems like diarrhoea, inspite of the fact that we “know” how to solve them. This is an example to give you an idea of what a TED talk is. Click here if you’re unable to see the embedded video. Another example is the famous “Sixth Sense” talk by Pranav Mistry (a must see, if you haven’t seen it)

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

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

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

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

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Event report: Mozilla for you Business

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(Last weekend, Pune played host to Arun Ranganathan, Technology Evangelist for the Mozilla Foundation, Seth Bindernagel, Director of Localization, and Axel Hecht, who co-ordinates localization from a technical perspective, and Ragavan Srinivasan, from Mozilla Labs. We had a meeting of the Mozilla Folks and the Pune Open Coffee Club. POCC member Gurminder Singh, posted this “event report” on the Pune Startups mailing list. It is reproduced here with permission.)

The Mozilla Foundation logo
Image via Wikipedia

The whole session proved to be very interesting. Here is short summary about session on 21st/ Feb 2010 at SICSR Pune.

It Started with Arun’s presentation which covered

Open web platform

Open web platform does not mean open source, it means the standards on which web is based should be open. for e.g PHP is open standard and used by facebook to build million dollar business, Google supports and extensively uses open standards. Organizations should involve in defining and shaping open standards while keep in view the way web is evloving.

Using this open web platform million dollar businesses can be built.

The HTML5 standard has many revolutionary features to change the how people interact with web. One of them is Video

Future of Video on Web

Currently there is no standard format of video on web. We can see avi, mov, mp4, flv etc floating all over. People mistakenly assume flash to be standard because of its widespread use. Flash is a proprietary format from Adobe and lacks the open standard definition which makes it hard for Open standard browsers like Firefox to support it. Therefore HTML5 is coming up with new open format for video “Ogg Theora”. Recently  after a lot of community pressure YouTube announced support for Ogg theora format.

In HTML5 using elements like canvas, video and SVG a video can be treated as data and manipulated on runtime. for eg user can put a video inside a video on the fly. It can be used to make ajax calls on video and running it without any third party software.

Firefox capturing device orientation

With new hardware capabilities like accelerometer very common in devices, firefox has come up with new api to capture device orientation events. This capability can be used for better user experience detecting the motion.

Fonts for web

There was small discussion about a company name typekit.com . Typekit provides user with all the fancy fonts which till today were shaped in some image editing software and pasted as image on website.

GeoLocation

Firefox 3.6 is having support for geolocation api. Geolocation identifies the users location and points it on google maps. Under the hood it uses google gears service.

Web3GL

Future firefox versions (maybe 3.8 , 3.9) will have support for 3D graphics. This is based on web3gl component which interacts with OpenGL to render graphics on screen.

The Mozilla-based Business Idea competition

At the end of session Seth, Arun, Ragavan and Axel organized a small contest where in audience was divided in 10 teams of 3. Each team was given 5 minutes to come up with business idea and present it to audience. Presentation time was 1 min and after questioning about business model etc a winner was decided.

Out of the ten business ideas, these 4 were in finals:

  • Typekit.com for indian languages – typekit.in
  • e-learning classrooms for physically impaired – using video in video capabilities of HTML5
  • Making a video using Mashup – e.g Google maps,text to speech audio
  • Using Geolocation api from firefox – giving user local search results like restaurants

The winner was: e-learning classrooms for physically impaired.

It was great experience to interact with team. We are hungry for more such sessions. Thanks for coming and thanks for reading this through 🙂

About the Author – Gurminder Singh

By profession, Gurminder is a System programmer (C, Linux kernel,Wireless Networks) and has a hobbyist he is a Django, Firefox extensions, and web-2.0 developer. His interests are building useful products(Mashups) using web2.0 components

He is learning new technologies with his experiment http://www.tutit.net. It is a social tuting place, where a user can publicaly store tutorial bookmarks. It is hosted on Google App Engine using Django, Jquery and Dojo.

Gurminder is on twitter as @sgurminder, and can be reached at sgurminder@gmail.com

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Mozilla for your Business 2: Understand the future of web technologies with the Mozilla team – 21st Feb

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(Once again, a number of members of the Mozilla Foundation (the organization behind such technologies as Firefox, JQuery, the Fennec mobile browser) are in Pune, and we are taking this opportunity to allow Pune’s startups, and web developers to interact with them and talk about web technologies, and the web as a platform. This event is free, anyone can attend, and no registration is necessary. This article by Arun Ranganathan, Technology Evangelist with the Mozilla team, and gives an idea of what to expect at this meet.)

Mozilla in Pune – II

The Mozilla Foundation logo
Image via Wikipedia

Mozilla, the organization behind the Firefox web browser, is in town for GNUnify 2010 and, like last year, would love to spend a Sunday morning meeting with Pune’s web businesses, web developers, and budding startups. Join Mozilla for breakfast on Sunday February 21 between 10a.m. and 1p.m., at SICSR (Symbiosis Institute of Computer Studies and Research, Model Colony. Map), along with an informal discussion and some presentations, leaving lots of time for questions and answers, and some breakfast snacks.

So much has happened in a year! For one thing, some emerging web technologies have matured, and are seeing substantial deployment by other browsers. And for another, Mozilla Labs has continued to innovate. Our discussion will touch on:

  • HTML5, and the launch of the platform wars. We’ve already seen at least two web-based operating systems — ChromeOS and Palm’s webOS — and we’ve seen much discussion about new browsers. We’ve also seen a sometimes shrill debate about the role of plugins in the web ecosphere, especially Flash. What does all this hold in store for the technology startup of the future?
  • Startups have launched in the US that take advantage of some new technical directions, including web font capabilities, as well as radical new communication ideas. What role does open video play in all this? Are business models changing at all?
  • The emergence of “Device APIs” including hardware-accelerated 3D graphics, geolocation capabilities, accelerometer capabilities, file system access, camera access, etc. Is the web consuming all other software platforms? What does the web lack that a software startup really needs? Is the web also the mobile platform we’ve all been waiting for?
  • Extension models for web browsers that really make life simple, like Firefox’s JetPack. We’ve already seen many successful new JetPacks emerge on the market, including some that help education. An overview of what can be built with JetPack, and why we think it’s the promising new direction for building on top of Firefox. Also, we’ll talk about Weave, Identity as the next Big Problem, and much more from Mozilla Labs.

From the Mozilla side, we’ll have:

  • Ragavan Srinivasan, Mozilla Labs. Ragavan is the Product Manager for Mozilla’s Weave endeavor, and coordinates Mozilla Labs’ activities in a variety of areas, including identity.
  • Seth Bindernagel, Director of Localization. Seth travels more than anyone you have met, working hard to ensure that when Firefox ships, it ships in over 70 languages simultaneously.
  • Axel Hecht, Senior Software Engineer. Axel coordinates localizations from a technical perspective, as well as touches on many other parts of Mozilla’s code.
  • Arun Ranganathan, Technology Evangelist. Arun works on making sure emerging technologies land as part of the “The Web Platform” and works to keep the web open, participating in technology working groups and crafting standards.

To attend this event, just show up at SICSR, 7th Floor, at 10am on Sunday, 21st February. This event is open to all. It is free. No registration is necessary.

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An Abundance of Open Source: GNUnify conference in Pune this weekend

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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).

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
Anybody who has any interest in technology should try to attend. It is free, and open for anybody to attend. All you need to do is register here, and you are read to attend two days full of technology talks, and to meet people who are most passionate about technology. Can you think of a better way to spend a Friday / Saturday?

The full list of talks and speaker profiles is give here. Dipen Chaudhary has given his list of 5 GNUnify talks that you must not miss. What is your list of must-attend talks? Please give suggestions in the comments.

There are a bunch of workshops you can attend that will teach you something, like designing with Inkscape, or web applications using python+pylons. There are talks on everything from couchdb, embedded linux using beagle board, closure, future of the web as a platform by the Mozilla team, CakePHP, Android, and much more.

The GNUnify blog is also quite active, and has been publishing short interviews with some of the speakers. See for example:

And follow GNUnify on twitter to get the latest updates on what is going on with GNUnify.

Ignite Pune 2: Speak for 5 minutes on anything you’re passionate about

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After a great Ignite Pune event last year, ThoughtWorks Pune brings you the second edition of Ignite Pune 2, on Thursday, March 18th, 6pm onwards, at Thoughtworks office, Ground Floor, Tower C, Panchshil Tech Park, Yerwada.

Ignite is an event where you can talk for 5 minutes about any topic you're passionate about. And you get to hear about the passions of others in Pune.
Ignite is an event where you can talk for 5 minutes about any topic you're passionate about. And you get to hear about the passions of others in Pune.

Ignite comprises a series of 5 minute talks on a wide variety of topics of general interest; and it comes with a promise that there will be no sales pitches or product demos! Imagine you’re on stage, you have 5 minutes & 20 slides to make your point. Is there a topic that inflames your passion? Then send a mail to the Ignite Pune team.

Even if you’re not planning on speaking, you should go there just to listen to a whole bunch of people talk about what they love doing the most. And to meet interesting people, and learn new things, and maybe, along the way, pick up a new passion. This event is free for all to attend – all you need to do is register here.

For more details see see the Ignite Pune website. It includes a link to a write up about the first Ignite Pune, and the speakers and topics covered last year. That should give you an idea of what to expect (or maybe not – you might get a completely different set of topics and speakers).