All posts by Navin Kabra

PuneTech editorial policy – biased, and proud of it!

Click on the logo to get all PuneTech articles about PuneTech
Click on the logo to get all PuneTech articles about PuneTech

On a recent article, an anonymous commenter castigated us thus:

This posts comes across as a promotion of a person more than his views/contributions or even his blog. Please be objective in future such promotions (a disclaimer, e.g. he is not paying or otherwise doing any favors to PuneTech to promote him, would also help). Peace.

While responding to that comment, we felt that now would be a good time to let PuneTech readers know what are the editorial guidelines PuneTech uses in determining what goes up on the front page, and the tone we use. We encourage you to read the detailed guidelines, and give us your feedback, but the quick drift of the guidelines is this:

  • PuneTech is a completely non-commercial site. Nobody makes any money from this site. No favours of any kind are accepted in return for any content posted on the site.
  • The PuneTech front page has never been, and never will be objective. We select what information appears on the front page, and we give our own opinion along with it. We feel that this makes the site (more) useful.
  • We encourage opposing points of view in the comments – those too make the site more useful.
  • User comments are governed by a separate comments policy.
  • The PuneTech wiki, and the PuneTech calendar are not governed by these guidelines. Anybody is free to post anything there, as long as it is relevant to Pune and to technology.

The basic idea is that we strive hard to be free of vested insterests, but we are not objective. We are not fair and balanced. In fact, we are quite unbalanced! We are opinionated, and make those opinions known.

We do believe a little bit in the “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything” philosophy. If we don’t like a particular company, or person, or technology, we simply don’t feature it on PuneTech. Unfortunately though, there are lots of companies, people, groups and technologies that we like quite a lot, but haven’t yet put up on PuneTech, simply because we lack the time to do so.

That’s where you can come in. Please help PuneTech and the tech community in Pune by writing articles about interesting technology in Pune. You can write the article for PuneTech, or you can write it for your own blog and let us know, so we can publish it on PuneTech. If you publish a long, detailed article about the technology domain that your company is working in, that is of wider interest to PuneTech readers, we’ll even allow you to put in a pitch for your own company (and the kind of people you’re looking to hire) at the end of your article. That much cheating is allowed, as is explicitly mentioned in the editorial guidelines.

If you have any comments, suggestions or any other feedback for us, please let us know in the comments below.

Editorial Policy

Click on the logo to get all PuneTech articles about PuneTech
Click on the logo to get all PuneTech articles about PuneTech

PuneTech is a for-the-community, non-commercial site, with an intention to keep technology professionals in Pune informed of interesting technologies, events, companies, user groups, organizations, mailing lists, and people in, or related to Pune. A lot of the content that is put up on PuneTech actually comes from other sources, and is often a cut-n-paste job, if not a direct copy (with permission). Thus, a lot of the value that PuneTech provides is in the selection of the content, and the editorial opinions and biases that we introduce in the process.

This note lays out our editorial policy to help the community understand what goes up on the site, and why:

  • PuneTech does not accept any payments or favors (monetary or otherwise) from any body, for any reason. All content on PuneTech is there because we feel that it needs to be there, and is in keeping with the purpose and the spirit of the site.
  • PuneTech strives hard to be free of vested interests. With precisely that in mind, right from the first day, we’ve always made it clear that PuneTech is not monetized in any way, and it does not provide any direct revenues, or indeed any direct monetary benefit to anybody associated with PuneTech. (For example, we don’t promote our own companies, and before promoting, or featuring our friends or their companies, we try very hard to ensure that we use the same criteria for judging them as we use for everybody else. And thankfully, our friends all respect this fact.)
  • However, PuneTech is not objective. We believe in evaluating the world around us and making our opinions known. We strongly believe that our opinions have value, and that our readers value our opinions. All PuneTech posts will always reflect the opinions of the authors (at least those opinions that we feel are worth publicizing to the rest of the world).
  • PuneTech often has posts that promote a certain company, event or person. In fact, it can be argued that all the posts on PuneTech are promoting something or someone. When we write about a company, we are essentially promoting it, and implicitly saying that the company is good enough to feature on PuneTech. When we write about an upcoming event, we are promoting the event, and essentially saying that we feel this event will be good, and worth attending. When we interview a person, or otherwise write about him/her, we are promoting that person, and saying here is a person that you should know.
  • We welcome and encourage opposing points of view in the comments. We usually approve all such comments, as long as they are in keeping with the PuneTech comments policy. Occasionally, we do delete comments that violate our policy, so please read the comments policy carefully to get an idea of what is not allowed.

Note: the PuneTech wiki is an open wiki that anybody can add to, and edit. Any content that anybody puts up there will usually be left there, as long as it is relevant to Pune, and relevant to technology, and is not illegal in some way. Note, however, that we, or someone else, might edit the content to make it more useful and usable.

In contrast, all content goes up on the the PuneTech blog (i.e. content which goes up on the front page, and to all PuneTech subscribers) is controlled by the PuneTech editor (currently Navin Kabra, with help from Amit Paranjape, and also some other friends of PuneTech). These are the rough guidelines currently used in determining what is appropriate for the front page:

  • Company profiles for interesting companies. Service companies are boring – unless the service happens to be something unique. Product companies are more interesting, especially if the product is technologically interesting, or has some aspect that is innovative. Or the product or service is itself useful for the tech community Pune.
  • Interviews of interesting tech people. Guidelines here are similar to that for company profiles – the person must be working on something that is technologically interesting, or innovative, or unique in some way, or useful to the tech community in Pune.
  • Events: The event must be in Pune,  and should be related to technology. By and large, we try to focus on events that are free, or have a nominal fee. In general, we will not feature commercial events (i.e. those which have a hefty registration fee), unless we feel that the content is especially interesting, and the price especially reasonable. We usually don’t feature information about paid training programs. These days, there are so many tech events in Pune, that we have started being selective about featuring only the more interesting events on our front page – all other events that fit our criteria are posted on the PuneTech calendar.  Note: the PuneTech calendar, like the PuneTech wiki, is a by-the-community calendar. Anyone is free to add events to the calendar.
  • PuneTech does not post job requirements. We are constantly asked about unpaid or paid job postings, but we feel that having job postings on PuneTech would distract from the primary purpose of the site. Note, however: if somebody writes a long, detailed and interesting article for PuneTech about the technology domain that their company is working in, one that would be of wider general interest to the readers of PuneTech, then, at the end of the article, we allow a short pitch about the company, and that can include a description of the kind of people they’re looking to hire. We feel that is a fair trade-off.

A few things to note:

  • These editorial guidelines have evolved over time, and will continue to evolve. Thus, it is possible that some article that featured on the PuneTech front page in the page violates one of these guidelines. The most likely reason would be that that guideline did not exist a the time the article was posted.
  • It is also possible that we make mistakes and violate our own guidelines. When you feel that such a mistake has happened, please point it out to us publicly (as a comment on the post). That will give us a chance to explain our choice to you and to everyone else, or to apologize, and learn from the mistakes.
  • If you can think of additions/modifications to the guidelines, please let us know.

Everything you wanted to know about shares and equity in your Startup – POCC meeting – 8th Aug

Pune OpenCoffee Club - POCC Logo
Click on the logo to find all punetech articles about the POCC

What: Pune OpenCoffee Club meeting focused around equity and related financial issues for startups, by Jayesh Baheti, CA, and other experts in company finance
When: Saturday, August 8th, 4pm-7pm
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.

Details:

How should startup co-founders divide up equity amongst themselves? How much equity to give advisors, mentors, and key initial employees? What are the rules governing equity that will affect me? What are the important issues in equity management that are typically ignored by young startups? Can a small startup give stock options to employees, and what are the gotchas in doing this?

If you’ve had any of these questions, then this meeting is for you. And if you are a startup founder and you are not facing any of these questions, then you are in deeper trouble than you thought! You definitely need to attend.

If you have similar/related questions, you can ask them on the POCC mailing list, and Jayesh will try to cover those points too in his presentation.

Jahesh Baheti’s previous POCC talk “What should I create: sole proprietorship, partnership, Pvt. Ltd., or LLP” has been one of the most attended events of POCC.  Slides of Jayesh’s talk are up on slideshare.

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PUG’s Microsoft Technologies Developer Conference – 8th/9th Aug

PUG DevCon 2009
PUG DevCon 2009

What: Pune User Group (PUG)’s DevCon conference on Microsoft technologies
When: 8, 9 August, 9:30am to 5:30pm
Where: College of Engineering Pune (COEP)
Registration and Fees: This event is free for everyone. Register here.

Details:
PUG Devcon is an event for developers to share, collaborate and meet up with like minded technology enthusiasts. Along with interesting interactive sessions, DevCon proves to be a platform for learning and sharing new technology. You get to meet the industry gurus, people in Microsoft and explore the issues in working on mobile devices, working on Windows application development, integrated Web solutions, Microsoft Office programming ,language enhancement and IDE productivity features. Issues such as easier development of applications across client types and migrating applications to .NET are all discussed here and new optimized solutions are provided.

DevCon is a Developer Conference from the developers, by the developers and for the developers. Developers may be professionals or students who will represent next generation developers. The agenda consists of two tracks that will cover .NET, Azure, Silverlight, and a bunch of other technologies. For information about the expected presenters look here.

Featured Products/Topics: .NET 4.0 Internals, Azure Services Platform, Silverlight 3 with Blend 3 Sketch Flow and DeepZoom, ASP.NET MVC, MS Office for Developers, PowerShell extending and embedding.

Recommended Audiences: IT Professionals, Microsoft Partners, Solution Architects, Software Developers, Students, Technical Decision Makers, Developers, Architects

For more information about the organizers, see the PuneTech profile of Pune User Group.

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TechWeekend: Three tech talks on Google Android, 4:30pm, 1st Aug

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

What: TechWeekend featuring “What makes Google Android different from other systems, and from regular Java” by Navin Kabra, “Maps, GPS and sensors in Android” by Rohit Ghatol, with a demo on an Android G1 phone, and more
When: Saturday, 1st August, 4:30pm
Where: Symbiosis Institute of Computer Studies and Research, Atur Centre, Model Colony. Map.
Registration and Fees: This event is free for all to attend. Please register here.

What makes Google Android different from other systems – Navin Kabra.

Google’s Android is a brand new platform for mobile phones, and has been created from scratch specifically for this purpose. This means that it is a “modern” system that does not suffer from any legacy issues, and has taken the best ideas from various other projects to build a system that is arguably better than any of the other, competing, systems. Thus, for example, it uses the Java language as the development language, but has rejected the rest of the Java ecosystem. Specifically it uses a compeletely new virtual machine (Dalvik) which is redesigned with mobiles in mind – and has a number of very interesting design decisions that we will discuss. Similarly, the Android application framework represents a departure from the traditional way of doing things, and has a learning curve, but once you get used to it, it is great, especially for allowing different apps to share data, code, and in general co-operate.

We will explore and discuss this and various other design decisions in Android.

Maps, GPS and Sensor Capability – Rohit Ghatol

Rohit Ghatol is a co-founder of the Pune Google Technologies User Group (PuneGTUG), and one of the early adopters of the Google Android platform. He has already built a number of applications on Android, and is working on some interesting ideas in this area. In this talk, he will be discussing the mapping in the Android framework, and how the GPS and sensor capabilities can be combined with it to give powerful and rich experiences to users. He will be using his Google Android G1 phone to demonstrate these capabilities.

There will be one more speaker, but unfortunately, the details of that talk were not ready in time for this announcement. Please check back in a day for that update.

Also check out Dhananjay Nene‘s slides from the first TechWeekend: “REST Explained.”

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Actionable Insights into the World of Indian Startups – Abinash Tripathy’s blog

Abinash Tripathy is credited with building the best web-2.0 team in India (for Zimbra which sold to Yahoo! for US$350million.)
Abinash Tripathy is credited with building the best web-2.0 team in India (for Zimbra which sold to Yahoo! for US$350million.)

Abinash Tripathy’s blog, “Insights into the World of Indian Startups,” is a must read for all Pune Technology professionals.

Abinash is a serial entrepreneur who is now on the loose in Pune. Most recently, he spent a few years building Zimbra from scratch in India, created one of the best web-2.0 teams in India, a team that build a product that was acquired by Yahoo! for US$350 million.  Abinash quit Yahoo! in February 2009, and is going down the path of entrepreneurship once again. He is an advisor for Enterux, the company whose English Seekho product was one of the highlights of proto.in Pune.

In his own words, Abinash represents:

the new generation of Global Indians who spent 10 years in the US in the High Tech Industry and decided to return to India to be close to family and to be a change agent who will help young Indians understand the power of Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Having decided to spend the rest of my life in India, it is also in my interest to be a change agent (not just a voice) in the new, modern, developed India.

For the last few months, he has been writing a blog focused on the startup ecosystem in India. On the blog, he promises to be “highly opinionated (fair warning)  and a straight shooter who likes to base his theories on personal real world experience,” which should be very welcome insights for any entrepreneur.

Here are a few excerpts from his posts on the blog.

In “Building a Kickass Team Part II“, he writes:

4. Reward Performance  –  Anyone that has worked in tech and has a thorough understanding of this business knows that the output of one great engineer adds more value to the company than the output of one hundred average engineers.   Unlike the services industry which prides itself with the numbers of warm bodies it has on its rolls, the best tech startups pride themselves for being able to create huge value with the least number of people.   We all live in a capitalist society and the laws of capitalism are designed to reward the best.

In “What Ails the Startup Ecosystem in India,” among a host of other insightful things, he says:

If you are not a hacker, start today.   Stop wasting time on Drupal or other CMS platforms and start real programming.   ASP and .NET don’t count either. Learn real programming languages like Java, C, C++, PHP, Python, Ruby.   Start by contributing to open source projects to measure yourself against the best in the world.  We need lots of this breed for the startup ecosystem to grow and thrive.   We absolutely cannot rely on the government or our esteemed institutions like the IIT to produce hackers.   Hackers are mostly self taught creative geniuses who code for pleasure.

Tech startup founders need to be people with very deep technology backgrounds as well.  There is a reason our industry is called Hi-Tech.   If founders lack this key ingredient, then they are going to hire duds who cannot deliver.

Read the whole post, it is quite interesting.

You should subscribe to the blog, and also follow Abinash on twitter (and unless you’ve been living in a cave, you should know why you should be on twitter.)

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Introducing PuneTech Video – your feedback needed

PuneTech logoWe are now experimenting with an additional format for PuneTech updates – short video clips hosted on YouTube.

Almost since the time PuneTech started, people have been suggesting to us that we should use video. Finally, something clicked last week, and we decided to take the plunge and start it on an experimental basis.

Our first few video posts are up here (proto.in reactions) and here (Druvaa update). Admittedly the video quality is not great. The sound quality is also quite variable. The main issue is that we are basically trying to balance the quality of the video against the amount of effort required to produce each video. Right now, we are in favor of going with a minimally acceptable quality of video that we can produce with as little effort as possible. This ensures that we continue to produce videos regularly (as opposed to starting with a bang and then discontinuing it because it is too much work.)

So the question for you is this:

  • Is the current quality good enough? (Sound quality will probably improve a little bit over time as we get more experience. Picture quality is unlikely to improve.)
  • Are you able to stream/download it conveniently and watch it, or is it too painful?
  • More generally: Is this useful? (Please note: doing the video takes about 5 minutes, while writing an article with the same information will probably take us 1/2 hour. Which means that either you get all this info in video format, or you get 20% of this info as articles, and the remaining 80% is lost. So please answer yes for this question if you think you will watch at least 30% to 40% of the videos, and answer no, if you think you’ll probably not watch the videos at all.)
  • Any other suggestions are welcome

Please leave your responses as comments. Your responses will help us decide whether we should continue this, or use that time to work on some other aspect of PuneTech.

Druvaa: From proto.in presenter to proto.in sponsor in 18 months

Pune based backup software startup Druvaa has gone from being a 3-person startup that presented at proto.in 18 months back, to a 16-person company that is profitable, and sponsored proto.in this weekend. We caught up with Jaspreet Singh of Druvaa during proto and had a conversation with him about how they are doing.


Note: Please turn up the volume. The sound quality is not-so-great. (Hopefully future videos will be better.)

Please also check out the older PuneTech articles about Druvaa:

Interesting note: You’ll notice that over the years, Druvaa has shifted gears from selling continuous protection (which they started off with) to remote backups (which is their primary product now). This is a feature of any startup – adapting to the needs of the market.

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Attend proto.in from home – follow the live online coverage

Click on the logo to see all PuneTech articles about proto.in
Click on the logo to see all PuneTech articles about proto.in

Proto.in is in Pune today, and one of the ideas they are pushing this year, is live online coverage of the event. The idea is that while only 400 people can attend the event in person, many more should be able to follow the details online. With this in mind, this proto promises to the the most connected proto so far.

Here are the different ways in which you can follow proto online:

  • http://proto.in/live: is proto’s live portal where you can follow all the proto activity. It aggregates all the live tweets about #protodotin. Bloggers can also submit their live-blogs and selected ones will be put up on this page. You can download information about the companies that are presenting, and you can leave feedback for the companies.
  • @PuneTechLive will be live-tweeting the event. Unfortunately, twitter search does not pick up punetechlive’s tweets, so the proto.in/live page and the twitter search pages will not show you these tweets. So you have to follow punetechlive in twitter (or go to http://twitter.com/punetechlive and refresh periodically).
  • The hashtag for proto.in is “#protodotin”, so searching for that on twitter, or on technorati should give you the latest on what is going on.
  • On an experimental basis, PuneTech will be trying to videoblog. We will have short (1 or 2 minute) interviews with various interesting people throughout the data. Check PuneTech’s youtube page and refresh periodically.

Keep checking this page also, we’ll try to keep it updated with …umm… updates throughout the day.

PuneTech is also trying out live-video updates of proto.in. Check out this video:

Highlights of Proto.in Presentations

Here is what we feel were the best parts of proto so far:

  • Vardenchi motorcycles on stage. Awesome audience impact!
  • HyCa presenting a product based on very complicated chemical process in words that we understood.
  • EnglishSeekho demo – The product speaks for itself. No explanation needed
  • EnglishSeekho founder asking: we could be providing pesticide info to farmers, we could be providing information about contraception to rural girls, in a convenient and confidential setting, we could be providing life-changing, life-saving information at the right time, at the right price (maybe Rs. 5). Isn’t that better than spending time building websites that sell movie or airline tickets or books online?
  • TouchMagix demo of Magix 3D Sense. Someone on twitter pointed out – proto.in felt like TED for a moment!

Demo Tips for Startups

Based on what we saw at proto.in presentations, here are some tips for those who presenting their startup:

  • Read Jason Calcanis“How to demo your startup”. It’s a must read
  • Dress conservatively! You don’t want to draw attention to your dress. Definitely do NOT dress in a white suite and white-and-brown shoes.
  • If you have 30 minutes, then spending time on the educational and professional background of the team makes sense. If you have just 6 minutes, skip it. Go straight to your product.
  • You shouldn’t need to spend half your time motivating your product. Just show your product, and the audience should be able to see the motivation. Otherwise your product is not compelling enough (or you are pitching to the wrong audience)

Audience Reactions

These are reactions of Pune tech community regulars to the proto.in presentations:

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How to increase community participation in the Pune tech scene? Best suggestion wins a proto.in pass

Update: The “contest” part has ended, and the winner (amongst those who want a pass) is Annkur. But, please keep the suggestions coming in. We have some great suggestions up here. In a week or two, we’ll have a follow-up initiative to identify which specific ones to actually implement immediately (and who will do it). Thanks!

PuneTech logoPune’s tech scene is rocking.

How do we rock it more? How do we get more people involved? How do we get more students involved? How do we get more people from large companies (Infosys, Wipro) involved? Please give ideas.

Maybe you have an idea for a new series events that will be very useful. Maybe you have an idea for how to get more people to collaborate with each other. Maybe you have an idea for an interesting use of technology to improve the ‘community’. Maybe you have an idea for how to get people to contribute more to our wikis/social-networks/mailing lists.

PuneTech is giving away a proto.in pass (worth Rs. 750) to the person with the best suggestion. But please don’t let that be your  motivation. Even those not interested in the proto.in pass please give your suggestions.

Here are the approximate rules:

  • The suggestion does not have to be about punetech.com. It can be about improving any aspect of the tech community in Pune. e.g. you can suggest how to make the Pune OpenCoffee Club more useful that it already is, or something to do with the Pune Linux Users Group, or anything at all.
  • Criteria for evaluation will be: practicality of suggestion, what are the chances of success, ease of making it happen, and the impact it will have.
  • Leave your suggestion as a comment on this post; or you can put it up on your own blog and leave a link from here.
  • If you’re not interested in winning the proto.in pass, please say so in your comment, so that the prize can go to the next best comment
  • The best comment received until 5pm on Friday (24th) will receive the prize. Please ensure that you leave appropriate contact info so that we can contact you on Friday evening if you win.

Get set. Go!