Category Archives: Events

Advantage Pune Panel Discussion: Opportunities for Pune to become an Innovation Hub

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These are a few quick ‘n dirty notes captured during a Panel Discussion that was held as a part of the “Global Conclave: Advantage Pune” event held in Pune yesterday, organized by Zinnov and Software Exporters Association of Pune (SEAP). The panel discussion was on the topic “Opportunities and Challenges for Pune to become an Innovation Hub”. The panelists were:

  • Bhavani Shankar from Zinnov
  • Akila Krishnakumar head of Sungard India
  • Ashish Deshpande from Google (based in Pune)
  • Kiran Gadi head of Motorola Mobility India
  • Omkar Nimbalkar head of Tivoli Group IBM India
  • Tarun Sharma head of BMC India

Overall, a few themes that most people touched upon were these:

  • Pune isn’t just about software. It has automotive, manufacturing, sciences (for example, NCL), and other things going for it. So it is more rounded than other cities
  • Pune has great climate
  • Pune has lots of educational instiutions
  • Pune is still not as crowded as Bangalore, so growth is still possible in Pune.

Overall, these are the advantages that Pune has for driving innovation.

Here are some additional interesting points made by the panelists:

  • [Akila] Sungard is probably one of the earliest Software Product MNCs to set up in Pune (back in 1993). Pune has 20% of Sungard’s global R&D strength. BFSI is the biggest market for the software sector, and hence a lot of innovation in Pune’s software industry has to happen (will happen) in this space
  • [Kiran] Our Pune center had lower attrition than other cities. This was a huge advantage.
  • [Tarun] 23% of BMC is in Pune. Largest in the world. This gives huge advantages – having many different teams in one location. This is easier to achieve do than in other cities.
  • [Omkar] Pune has an advantage over Bangalore that it still has space to grow. In Bangalore, it is very difficult to find space.
  • [Tarun] Pune definitely has a better perception of quality of life compared to Bangalore. It’s still a small city compared to Bangalore – you can get anywhere in 30 minutes. And the culture and art is great.
  • [Akila] Pune and Germany have had a great relationship, because of the auto industry. Pune has the largest concentration of German companies in India. This is a great opportunity for Pune’s software industry – it needs to leverage this and grow the software market in Europe.
  • [Kiran] The great thing about the Pune Community is that all the different groups (Software Exporters Association of Pune (SEAP), PuneTech, TiE, Pune Open Coffee Club, Head Start, CSI Pune) all talk to each other and co-operate.
  • [Akila] Pune’s demographics are interesting – lower than average age, and higher than average per capita income. It is easier to find early adopters in Pune, and easier to do viral (i.e., cheap) marketing in Pune. For example, it is not a surprise that it is the gaming capital of the country.

IPMA Event Report: Market Research Using Social Media

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(This is a live blog of the presentation on Market Research using Social Media, by Pinkesh Shah, for the Indian Product Managers Association (IPMA) Pune event. Since it is a live blog, it might have errors, and won’t be as well organized as an article ought to be. Please keep that in mind while reading.)

Background – Why is Market Research Important

Product Management is really about Value management. There are five parts to it:

  • Understanding Value: Understand what the customer wants / care about
  • Creating Value: Build the Product
  • Capturing Value: Making sure that your product is appropriately priced. It is not necessary that you charge for the product immediately, or at all. You might make money somewhere else.
  • Communicating Value: Position your value proposition appropriately
  • Delivering Value: Making sure your product / value reaches the right person. Having the correct Channels.
Pinkesh Shah talking at IPMA Pune

For your next product or product feature, you will have lots of idea. But knowing what will really be the right thing to focus on is difficult. For a successful product or feature, the following pipeline is important:

  • Market Analysis: Choosing what to build
  • Strategic Analysis: Building the product profitably
  • Building the Product: In India we are very good at this step
  • Go to Market: Marketing it Right
  • Sales Enablement: Selling Effectively

The rest of this talk will focus on mostly on Market Analysis.

What does a PM do? It’s more than just requirement analysis:

  • Champions the customer’s context within the organization
  • Define the roadmap for a product, and deliver products that customers will actually buy
  • Master orchestrator of the productization process

Market Research – An Art and a Science

Ways to do market research:

  • Surveys: very few people do surveys. And it is easy to do. The only thing difficult is to come up with good survey questions. But otherwise this is one of the best and scalable techniques for market research.
  • Talking to your sales guys
  • Reading research reports from people like Gartner
  • Ethnography: watching your customers in their natural setting. In Big Bazaar there are always people standing in a corner of the store and observing customers. They spend 8 hours watching the patterns.
  • User research: Bring users in and make them go through use cases
  • Win Loss Interviews
  • Product Advisory Council: Announce a product, as if it is already done. Put out a Google ad about this product that does not exist. Target it for the geography and demographics that you’re interested. And then check who and how many people are clicking on it. Gives you a good idea of whether it is really working or not. Very easy and cheap way of figuring out whether your product is going to work. And you can do it sitting at home in India for any product targeting anywhere in the world

Why is social media is a great tool for market research?

  • Getting real users in a the real world is a lot of effort. Easier to get users online: LinkedIn, Facebook, Blogger, Quora, Twitter, etc.
  • Viral propagation. Truly borderless. And impossible to do without social media even if you have lots of money
  • Asychronous. You and the users don’t have to be in the same place at the same time. Makes it much easier.
  • Figure out who are the influencers

LinkedIn

Great resource. All people in professional settings are on LinkedIn. Hence, for product management, especially enterprise products, this is a great resource.

Very easy to create surveys / polls on LinkedIn and ask questions about your potential future product / features, and get responses from people all over the world. With demographic information from LinkedIn.

You can not only get quantitative results, but also qualitative results and opinions.

In addition, you get to go back and give updates to all those who participated about what happened, what features were included, etc.

Audience Question: What about competition finding out about your product ideas / features?

Answer: This is a problem with all market research. But in most cases, the idea is not the most important part of the product, so it’s OK. If indeed your idea is the secret sauce, then don’t include it in your market research, but in most cases it is no.

Uservoice

If you are a product manager, you must use Uservoice.

Similarly there is CustomerVoice, an Indian Startup similar to Uservoice, but for India.

Facebook likes are not a good substitute for Uservoice. You need really granular feedback, which a “like” does not give.

Landing Pages

A landing page can be created within 5 minutes of creating an idea. Just put up your idea, ask people to register for the beta. At this point, you don’t have a beta, but you can decide whether to create one or not based on the amount of interest you generate.

Online Ads for Validation

Think of a product. Assume that the product already exists, and create an ad for the product. Put the ad out. Target a few important cities and sectors (e.g. Bangalore, Delhi, Pune, Chennai). See how many people click on the ad, and from which city and sector. That will give you an idea of how much interest is there for your product, and which geographies and sectors your product should target.

Do not start building a product unless you have done this.

Google Ads are good for validating a concept, but not very good for getting an idea of the people who clicked on the ad. LinkedIn ads cost more, but provide much more details about the click-throughs.

Analytics

Make sure you have Google Analytics installed on all your websites. It is free and gives you lots of data on who’s coming and what they’re doing.

In addition there are paid services (often fairly inexpensive) that do even better.

For example, there is an Indian startup called Wingify that allows you to do A/B testing on your website. If you don’t know what A/B testing is, find out now.

Other interesting websites/products

  • Ask Your Target Market: http://aytm.com – ask questions to specific target groups (mostly US)
  • Sprout Social: http://sproutsocial.com – get social media conversations about various keywords
  • CDC Pivotal CRM – get twitter and other social media conversations of each customer

Parting Thought

Samuel Colt, who invented the revolver, said that his invention was one of the most important things ever. Because, he said, “God made men. I’ve enabled them to be equal.” The person without strength, money, knowledge, can still win if s/he has a revolver.

Social Media is the revolver for product management. Anyone can do it now.

Don’t let this weekend end without sending out a survey.

SEAP Book Club Meeting Report: Crucial Conversations

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(Warning: this is a live-blog of the presentation, written while the event was going on. So it might have errors, might not be as well organized as an article ought to be, and I might have misrepresented the speaker. Please keep that in mind while reading.)

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

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

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

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

  • Right motive:

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

Audience Discussion

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

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

Win 3 free passes to ClubHack via Online Capture-The-Flag Hacking Contest

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ClubHack is one of India’s foremost conferences on Security, and this weekend Pune will play host to the 5th ClubHack conference. Richard Stiennon is the keynote speaker, and look here for the complete agenda.

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

More details of the contest are here.

Very high-powered India/US education conference in Pune – Dec 5-7

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From 5 to 8 December, Pune will play host to a very high powered conference on education, featuring some of the top names in education from India and US. And by top names, I really mean the top: everyone’s listed as speakers and panelists, from ministers (Sharad Pawar, Vilasrao Deshmukh, Sushilkumar Shinde, and others), Governors, bureaucrats (from planning commission, AICTE, UGC), heads of various universities and colleges too numerous to mention (including Kadam, DY Patil, Navale, Karad, Mujumdar – all the big names in Maharashtra’s higher education), and a whole lot of others.

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

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

For more details, see the AUSIB website.

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

IPMA Event: Leveraging Social Media for Market Research – 3 Dec

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The next meetup of the Indian Product Managers Association (IPMA), Pune, will feature a talk on Leveraging Social Media as a Market Research Tool (as opposed to outbound marketing), by Pinkesh Shah, Founder and CEO at Adaptive Marketing. The event is on Saturday, 3rd December.

About the Speaker – Pinkesh Shah

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

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

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

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

About IPMA

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

Fees and Registration

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

Java Knowledge Contest to win free tickets to IndicThreads Java Conference

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PuneTech is pleased to announce a Java Knowledge Contest which will give the winner a free ticket to the IndicThreads Java Conference.

The 6th Annual IndicThreads.com Conference On Java will be held on 2nd & 3rd December 2011 here in Pune. Sessions at the conference discuss topics like JavaEE 7 & the Cloud, Java EE 6 PaaS, Scala, Scalability, Concurrent Java, Gradle, JavaFX, REST Web Services, Google Protocol Buffers, Solr Search, JavaFX, Akka & more.

IndicThreads has been running a Java Conference in Pune for the last 6 years, and claims to be the oldest vendor-neutral Java conference. It is a great place to learn & discuss Java. You can check out PuneTech’s previous coverage of IndicThreads conferences to get an idea of our opinion of these conferences.

This Java Knowledge Contest will give two PuneTech readers the chance to attend this conference for free (which otherwise costs Rs. 3500 (2500 for students)). The contest is open to all, and all you need to do to enter is take one of these Java Knowledge tests:

Quick rules:

  • Complete the challenge on or before 6pm on Monday, 28th November, 2011.
  • Each of the above two challenges will have one winner who gets a free ticket. You can enter both if you so wish, but you will be allowed to win only one.
  • The ticket is not transferable. If you don’t want the free ticket, let us know, and we’ll give it to the next highest scorer
  • Names of judges (for the subjective questions contest), and tie-breaker rules (for the objective questions contest) will be announced soon.

For more details about the conference see: http://Java.IndicThreads.com

(Disclaimer #1: PuneTech has a policy of not promoting paid events, except under these circumstances:

  1. We publicize calls for speakers of conferences in Pune, especially if selected speakers get a free entry to the conference
  2. We publicize events where the fees are reasonably low, or if the event is exceptional.
  3. We publicize contests related to such events if that will result in PuneTech readers getting a chance at free tickets
  4. We allow addition of paid conferences to the PuneTech calendar, and will sometimes tweet about them, but they are not allowed on the PuneTech front page unless they satisfy one of the criteria above
  5. We are happy to publish event reports after the event, if they match up to our quality expectations.

This contest is being published on PuneTech due to reason #3.

Disclaimer #2: The contest is being run on ReliScore.com. Since the founders of ReliScore are also the people behind PuneTech, we try hard not to misuse PuneTech for publicizing ReliScore (due to the conflict of interest). However, in this particular case, since the contest benefits the community, we felt it was acceptable.)

InnoVidya meeting: Changing Higher Education – 26 Nov

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The gap between what our engineering colleges produce and what our industry would like to consume is widening, and will become an increasingly severe problem for the health of the software industry in India. Everybody realizes there is a problem, and there are lots of people working on this issue from various angles. Entrepreneurs are rushing in to fill the gaps, educators, especially those in independent institutes are trying interesting new experiments, and social media has the potential to change everything. InnoVidya is a platform that aims to bring together the people at the forefront of this revolution.

On November 26, we invite you to the first InnoVidya event – where the speakers will include Dr. Anil Sahasrabudhe, Director of CoEP, Mohit Gundecha, CEO of hot and recently funded startup, YourNextLeap, and Arun Prabhudesai, CTO of My Open Campus, a startup that aims to change how students interact with everybody. But the excellent line-up of speakers is not the main reason to attend this meeting – come for the audience: trustees of colleges, directors and HODs of educational institutes, heads of software companies who are desperately searching for solutions, and other Pune entrepreneurs who are looking to get rich as the Indian education system is forced to transform itself by inexorable global changes.

This is a free and open event, on Saturday, November 26th, from 10:30am to 12:30pm, at Venture Center, NCL Innovation Park, Pashan Road. Please register here.

Agenda for this Meet

  • 5-minute InnoVidya Introduction by Raja Bellare
  • 30-minute talk by Dr. Anil Sahasrabudhe, Director CoEP + 15 min Q&A
  • 20-minute pitch by Mohit Gundecha, Co-Founder & CEO YourNextLeap + 10 min Q&A
  • 20-minute pitch by Arun Prabhudesai, CTO MyOpenCampus + 10 min Q&A
  • followed by free time for hallway conversations.

Higher Education in India – Changing Scenarios – Anil Sahasrabudhe, Director, COEP

Anil is the Director of College of Engineering Pune (COEP). Anil joined COEP as the director in 2006. He holds a vision to take COEP to the next level with a view to enriching the life of every student who enters COEP.

Anil will talk about the changing scenarios in higher education in India.

Anil did his BE Karnataka University (Gold Medalist) and has a PhD from IISc Bangalore. In the past he has been a researcher at IISc, faculty at NERIST, Itanagar, and Professor at IIT Guwahati.

YourNextLeap – Smart Career Counseling and College Decisions

YourNextLeap is a recommendation engine which acts as a virtual career counselor to help students make smarter career and college decisions. It involves a suite of applications, which use psychometric evaluations and math models on past admission patterns, to give out personalized suggestions. Team YourNextLeap is excited about its mission to enhance the way millions of students and young professionals treat their careers. The team comprises of students from top US and Indian universities like BITS, NID, COEP, PICT, USC and Stanford University. More at http://yournextleap.com

About the Speaker – Mohit Gundecha

Mohit is the CEO & Co-founder of YourNextLeap. He was an early team member and head of India Operations for mig33, a mobile community with more than 50 million users. Prior to mig33, Mohit studied at Stanford University, where he co-founded Mobile Momentum with Prof. Tom Kosnik. Mohit has also co-authored a widely referenced mobile industry report, ‘Future of Mobile VAS in India’.

My Open Campus – Online Community for Faculty, Students, Employers and others

My Open Campus brings seamless collaboration to colleges, communities and closed user groups . MOC aims to bring all stakeholders (for e.g: students, faculties & administrators in a college) on single easy to use unified platform, where they can communicate and carry out all regular activities online.

MOC offers secure messaging, online assessments & exams, Information repository, student & Alumni groups, event management, Student database management, discussion forums, placements along with host of other features..

The vision of My Open Campus is to create employable intelligent students. There cannot be knowledge enhancement in an isolated and restrictive environment. Hence MOC brings together all stakeholders on a single platform to make learning a fun & social activity.

About the Speaker – Arun Prabhudesai

Arun is the CTO of Enhanced Education, the company behind MyOpenCampus. Having worked for over 15 years in I.T Industry across the globe, Arun returned back to India to pursue his dream of starting on his own. He has been quite active in Startup and Entrepreneur community is always in forefront in advising upcoming Entrepreneurs.

About InnoVidya

InnoVidya is a group of educators and industry professionals who want to reach out to students, teachers, trainers and working professionals and catalyze significant improvements in their learning ecosystems. In addition to the InnoVidya website and the InnoVidya mailing list, we also hold public lectures on the 4th Saturday of every month. Lectures usually involve talks by senior educators, industry visionaries, or social and/or for-profit entrepreneurs working in the space of higher education.

We are currently based in Pune, but we expect that this initiative will expand all over India.

More at: http://innovidya.org

And please join the mailing list: http://groups.google.com/group/innovidya

Venue Sponsor – 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.

Fees and Registration

This event is free and open for anybody to attend. Please register here. And join the InnoVidya mailing list (optional).

Code Retreat Pune – Day Long Programming Event

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Pune is participating in the Global Code Retreat day 2011. It’s a day-long programming event based on principles of good design. Its on Dec 3, from 9am to 6pm at Thoughtworks, Pune. The event is free but has a Rs. 200 deposit which will be refunded if you actually attend the event (to prevent people from registering if they’re not serious).

You only need to bring a laptop with the development tools you require to write code using your chosen programming languages. A breakfast and lunch will be provided.

Please spread the word amongst other developers and mailing lists.

This event is hosted by ITT (Innovation Technology Trust) and co-sponsored by ThoughtWorks and C42 Engineering. If you have any problems registering, or have any other questions, contact niranjan@c42.in

What is a Code Retreat?

Coderetreat is a day-long, intensive practice event, focusing on the fundamentals of software development and design. By providing developers the opportunity to take part in focused practice, away from the pressures of ‘getting things done’, the coderetreat format has proven itself to be a highly effective means of skill improvement. Practicing the basic principles of modular and object-oriented design, developers can improve their ability to write code that minimizes the cost of change over time.

This is a language-agnostic event. Each session, the pair chooses what language they want to work in. So, no matter what your language of choice, you are welcome. We practice the fundamentals: TDD and the 4 rules of simple design – these are applicable regardless of language.

The idea of day long practice sessions for programmers was formalized by Corey Haines. Read more on his blog about How does Code Retreat work?

Do read this blog post by Corey as well.

This 3:21minute video from Code Retreat Orlando is another wicked cool introduction!

What’s the deal with the Rs. 200 registration deposit?

CodeRetreat is a free event paid for by sponsors. For larger events, though, it is important to have an accurate view of attendance. This helps us purchase the right amount of food, snacks, etc. If people register, but don’t show up and don’t cancel, then we waste a lot of food, as well as have to turn some people away that want to come. To this end, we are asking for a Rs. 200 deposit to hold your space.

The Rs. 200 will be refunded to you at the event. Don’t worry, though, you may cancel your registration and get a refund up to 7 days before the event. If you want to transfer your registration to someone else, we can do that, too.

Fees and Registration

This event is open to anybody and has a Rs. 200 refundable deposit. Please register here

Location: ThoughtWorks Technologies, GF-01 and MZ-01, Tower C, Panchshil Tech Park, Yerwada. December 3, 9am – 6pm.

Get a 25%+ PuneTech discount on Unpluggd tickets for 2 days

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As we wrote earlier, Pluggd.in is one of the most influential sites as far as coverage of Indian startups is concerned, and their flagship event, Unpluggd is coming to Pune on the 19th. By long-standing policy, PuneTech does not explicitly promote paid tech events on the front page unless the event is exceptional, or the rates are very low, or, ideally, both. In case of Unpluggd, both of these are true, but for PuneTech readers, the rates are even better because:

Get a 25%+ discount on Unpluggd tickets (buy here (Ayojak – Pune startup) or here (doattend)) until 13th November by using the discount code PTECH. This gives you the ticket for Rs. 500 instead of the full price of Rs. 700.

What to expect at Unpluggd? Demos from 10 startups, selected from over 340 nominations received from all over India. Talks by some of India’s most successful startup founders and VCs. And networking. The community in Pune does an excellent job of holding lots of tech/startup events in Pune and giving opportunities to network locally; but events like Unpluggd give the opportunity to network with the startup community from all over India.