Category Archives: Events

Tech Trends for 2015, by Anand Deshpande, Shridhar Shukla, Monish Darda

In Depth, Live Blogging, Technology, , , ,

On Monday, I participated in a Panel Discussion “Technology Trends” organized by CSI Pune at MIT college. The panelists were Anand Deshpande, CEO of Persistent Systems, Shridhar Shukla, MD of GS Lab, Monish Darda, GM of BladeLogic India (which is now a part of BMC Software), and me.

Anand asked each of us to prepare a list of 5 technology trends that we felt would be important in the year 2015, and then we would compare and contrast our lists. I’ve already published my own list of 5 things for students to focus on last week. Basically I cheated by listing a just a couple of technology trends, and filled out the list with one technology non-trend, and a couple of non-technology non-trends.

Here are my quick-n-dirty notes of the other panelists tech trends, and other points that came up during the discussion.

Here is Shridhar’s list:

  • Shridhar’s trend #1: Immersive environments for consumers – from games to education. Partial virtual reality. We will have more audio, video, multi-media, and more interactivity. Use of keyboards and menu driven interfaces will reduce. Tip for students based on trend #1: don’t look down on GUIs. On a related note, sadly, none of the students had heard of TED. Shridhar asked them all to go and google it and to checking out “The Sixth Sense” TED video.
  • Shridhar’s trend #2: totally integrated communication and information dissemination.
  • Shridhar’s trend #3: Cloud computing, elastic computing. Computing on demand.
  • Shridhar’s trend #4: Analytics. Analytics for business, for government, for corporates. Analyzing data, trends. Mining databases.
  • Shridhar’s trend #5: Sophisticated design and test environments. As clouds gain prominence, large server farms with hundreds of thousands of servers will become common. As analytics become necessary, really complicated, distributed processes will run to do the complex computations. All of this will require very sophisticated environments, management tools and testing infrastructure. Hardcore computer science students are the ones who will be required to design, build and maintain this.

Monish’s list:

  • Monish’s trend #1: Infrastructure will be commoditized, and interface to the final user will assume increasing importance
  • Monish’s trend #2: Coming up with ideas – for things people use, will be most important. Actually developing the software will be trivial. Already, things like AWS makes a very sophisticated server farm available to anybody. And lots of open source software makes really complex software easy to put together. Hence, building the software is no longer the challenge. Thinking of what to build will be the more difficult task.
  • Monish’s trend #3: Ideas combining multiple fields will rule. Use of technology in other areas (e.g. music) will increase. So far, software industry was driven by the needs of the software industry first, and then other “enterprise” industries (like banking, finance). But software will cross over into more and more mainstream uses. Be ready for the convergence, and meeting of the domains.
  • Monish’s trend #4: Sophisticated management of centralized, huge infrastructure setups.

Anand’s list:

  • Anand’s trend #1: Sensors. Ubiquitous tiny computing devices that don’t even look like computers. All networked. And
  • Anand trend #2: The next billion users. Mobile. New devices. New interfaces. Non-English interfaces. In fact, non-text interfaces.
  • Anand’s trend #3: Analytics. Sophisticated processing of large amounts of data, and making sense out of the mess.
  • Anand’s trend #4: User interface design. New interfaces, non-text, non-keyboard interfaces. For the next billion users.
  • Anand’s trend #5: Multi-disciplinary products. Many different sciences intersecting with technology to produce interesting new products.

These lists of 5 trends had been prepared independently, without any collaboration. So it is interesting to note the commonalities. Usability. Sophisticated data analysis. Sophisticated management of huge infrastructure setups. The next billion users. And combining different disciplines. Thinking about these commonalities and then wondering about how to position ourselves to take advantage of these trends will form the topic of another post, another day.

Until then, here are some random observations. (Note: one of the speakers before the panel discussion was Deepak Shikarpur, and some of these observations are by him)

  • “In the world of Google, memory has no value” – Deepak
  • “Our students are in the 21st century. Teachers are from 20th century. And governance is 19th century” -Deepak
  • “Earning crores of rupees is your birthright, and you can have it.” – Deepak
  • Sad. Monish asked how many students had read Isaac Asimov. There were just a couple
  • Monish encouraged students to go and read about string theory.
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Web Scalability and Performance – Real Life Lessons (Pune TechWeekend #3)

In Depth, Live Blogging, Technology, , , ,

Last Saturday, we had TechWeekend #3 in Pune, on the theme of Website Scalability and Performance.  Mukul Kumar, co-founder, and VP of Engineering at Pubmatic, talked about the hard lessons in scalability they learnt on their way to building a web service that serves billions of ad impressions per month.

Here are the slides used by Mukul. If you cannot see the slides, click here.
Web Scalability & Performance

The talk was live-tweeted by @punetechlive and @d7ylive. Here are a few highlights from the talk:

  • Keep it simple: If you cannot explain your application to your sales staff, you probably won’t be able to scale it!
  • Use JMeter to monitor performance, to a good job of scaling your site
  • Performance testing idea: Take 15/20 Amazon EC2 servers, run JMeter with 200threads on each for 10 hours. Bang on your website! (a few days later, @d7y pointed out that using openSTA instead of JMeter can give you upto 500 threads per server even on old machines.)
  • Scaling your application: have a loosely coupled, shared nothing, stateless, distributed architecture
  • Mysql scalability tip: Be careful before using new features, or new versions. Or don’t use them at all!
  • Website scalability: think global. Some servers in California, some servers in London, etc. Similarly, think global when designing your app. Having servers across the world will drive architecture decisions. When half your data-center is 3000 miles from the other half, interesting, non-trivial problems start cropping up. Also, think carefully about horizontal scaling (lots of cheap servers) vs vertical scaling (few big fat servers)
  • memcache tip: pre-populate memcache with most common objects
  • Scalability tip: Get a hardware load balancer (if you can afford one). Amazon AWS has some load-balancers, but they don’t perform so well
  • Remember the YouTube algo for scaling:
    while(1){
    identify_and_fix_bottlenecks();
    eat_drink();
    sleep();
    notice_new_bottleneck();
    }
    there’s no alternative to this.
  • Scalability tip: You can’t be sure of your performance unless you test with real load, real env, real hardware, real software!
  • Scalability tip – keep the various replicated copies of data loosely consistent. Speeds up your updates. But, figure out which parts of your database must be consistent at all times, and which ones can have “eventual consisteny”
  • Hard lessons: keep spare servers at all times. Keep servers independent – on failure shouldn’t affect other servers
  • Hard lessons: Keep all commands in a script. You will have to run them at 2am. Then 3am. Then 7am.
  • Hard lessons: Have a well defined process for fault identification, communication and resolution (because figuring these things out at 2am, with a site that is down, is terrible.)
  • Hard lessons: Monitor your web service from 12 cities around the world!
  • Hard lesson, Be Paranoid – At any time: servers can go down, DDOS can happen, NICs can become slow or fail!

Note: a few readers of of the live-tweets asked questions from Nashik and Bombay, and got them answered by Mukul. +1 for twitter. You should also start following.

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Seminar on Google Wave: Intro, Gadgets, Robots – Pune GTUG Meet – Sept 12

Events, , , ,

Pune Google Technologies User Group GTUG logoWhat: Google Technology Users Group (Pune GTUG) presents a seminar on Google Wave – Introduction, Gadgets and Robots
When: Saturday, 12th Sept. 4pm to 6pm
Where: Synerzip. Dnyanvatsal Commercial Complex, Survey No. 23, Plot No. 189, Near Mirch Masala Restaurant , Opp Vandevi Temple, Karve Nagar (Map).
Registration and Fees: The event is free for all, no registration required.

Details
Google Wave is a new model for communication and collaboration on the web, coming later this year.

What is a wave?

A wave is equal parts conversation and document. People can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more. A wave is shared. Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Then playback lets anyone rewind the wave to see who said what and when.  A wave is live. With live transmission as you type, participants on a wave can have faster conversations, see edits and interact with extensions in real-time.

Seminar Topics

  • Introduction to Google Wave
  • Building Extensions to Google Wave
  • Building Gadgets – Walk through of building a Gadget
  • Building Robots – Walk through of building a Java based Robot
Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

TechWeekend #3: Website Performance, Scalability and Availability: Sept 5

Events, , , ,

Scalability (Source: Domas Mituzas, Wikipedia)
Click on the image to see other PuneTech articles on Scalability (Image Source: Domas Mituzas, Wikipedia)
What: TechWeekend featuring “Website Scalability and Performance” by Mukul Kumar, VP Engineering at Pubmatic, and “Website Availability and Recovering from Failures and Disasters” by Sameer Anja, Associate Director at KPMG
When: Saturday, 5th Sept, 4pm
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.

Website Scalability and Performance – Mukul Kumar

Mukul will talk about the various aspects of what it takes to run a very high traffic website – something that he has a lot of experience with at Pubmatic, the ad optimization service for web publishers, where they serve over a billion requests per month.

Mukul Kumar (mukul.kumar [at] pubmatic [dot] com) is a Co-Founder and VP of Engineering at Pubmatic, and Mukul is responsible for PubMatic’s engineering team and resides in Pune, India. Mukul was previously the Director of Engineering at PANTA Systems, a high performance computing startup. Previous to that he joined VERITAS India as the 13th employee and helped it grow to over 2,000 individuals as Director of Engineering for the NetBackup group, Veritas’ main product. He has filed for 14 patents in systems software, storage software, and application software and proudly proclaims his love of Π and can recite it to 60 digits. Mukul is a graduate of IIT Kharagpur with a degree in electrical engineering.

Website Availability and Recovery from Disasters – Sameer Anja

While everyone looks at security and focuses on confidentiality, privacy and integrity; an oft neglected parameter is of availability. While “neglected” may be seem like a strong term, the truth is that we overlook basic data on availability and do not even implement simple to-dos which would help in remediating the situation. The session is aimed at identifying such simple remedies, look at impacts, the assessment model and put forward various scenarios and possible solutions available. The session does not focus on specific products and instead endeavours to use existing technologies used for web site development and how they can be used for ensuring availability. Some principles of disaster recovery will also be covered.

Sameer is a Senior Manager in the IT Advisory practice and is working with KPMG since January 2007 and has 12+ years of work experience in the areas of Information Security, Product design and development, system and network administration. Worked on process and technology areas of Information Security. Worked on Governance and Compliance areas like SOX, Basel II, ISO 15048, SSE -CMM, Data Privacy apart from ISO 27001, Identity Management and Business Continuity design and testing. Experience working with startups and established setups. Speaker at various conferences/ seminars within India and abroad. Trained for six sigma green belt.

Pune Drupal Developers/Users meeting

Events, , , ,
Drupal
Image via Wikipedia

What: Get-together of Pune’s Drupal development/user community
When: Sunday, 30th August, 4pm
Where: Richmond Ventures, C-30, Liberty Society – Phase 2, Behind Baskin Robbins Icecream, Near Pizza Hut, North Main Road, Koregoan Park
Registration and Fees: This meeting is free for all to attend. No registration required.

Details:

The Agenda for the meeting is :

  • Networking of Pune’s Drupal community
  • Discussion on Drupal based Social Networking sites
  • Discussion on Zen theme usage.

This is organized by Nikhil Kala and Rajeev Karajgikar. Anyone interested in knowing more about Drupal is also invited.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Nominations open for Innovations 2010 – Showcase your ideas

Events, Featured, ,

Innovations is an annual conference to showcase new ideas from across the country. It is hosted by the IIT-Bombay Alumni Association, Pune Chapter
Innovations is an annual conference to showcase new ideas from across the country. It is hosted by the IIT-Bombay Alumni Association, Pune Chapter
Innovations is an annual event hosted by the Pune Chapter IIT Bombay Alumni Association in January every year, with the aim of helping innovators and entrepreneurs of India to create and expand the ecosystem around them. The event showcases the select few innovators to an elite gathering of VCs and experts. Innovations 2010 is the fourth event in their series and will feature presentations by 16 selected innovators from around the country.

The focus of Innovations is on novel ideas in practice, primarily originating from Science and Technology. In the past, innovations in the form of processes, products and applications from varied fields such as medicine, agriculture, mechanical/electronic/chemical technology/ Information Technology etc. have been showcased. The innovations to be showcased are selected by a panel of experts drawn from various application areas. They also work with the selected innovators to fine tune their presentation and bring out the unique features.

While the event is arranged by the IITB Alumni Association in Pune, the innovators and participants can be from anywhere. The innovator can benefit from peer recognition, an introduction to the IIT alumni network & mentorship if required. Some of the past innovators were able obtain funding to take their product to the next level. Other interested parties and investors get an opportunity to learn about new ideas and applications and to network.

Note: this is not necessarily a “startup” event. Innovators from all fields, irrespective of their educational qualifications, age group or affiliations to any organizations are welcome to submit their entry. Your entry may be a process, product, design, method, application or even a business model or a model of social entrepreneurship. Innovations from all fields are welcome. Entries are sought from individuals, research/academic institutions, NGOs, or corporate entities (with an annual turnover less than Rs. 50 Crore). Eligibility criteria for submitting an innovation entry are

  • Innovation must be a truly novel idea
  • Must be based on the application of science / technology
  • The idea should have been introduced in practice

Nominations can be submitted at the innovations website. The last date for nominations is October 30th. The actual event will happen on 9th January, 2010, in Pune.

Related links:

Innovation Flow – The Science of Flowing Ideas and Inventions into Innovation – 27th Aug

Events, , , , ,

NCL, India, is a research, development and consulting organisation with a focus on chemistry and chemical engineering. It has a successful record of research partnership with industry. It has over 200 scientists at its campus in Pune.
NCL, India, is a research, development and consulting organisation with a focus on chemistry and chemical engineering. It has a successful record of research partnership with industry. It has over 200 scientists at its campus in Pune.

What: Innovation Flow – the science of flowing Ideas and Inventions into Innovation by M.V. Shankar, Principal Scientist, Dow Chemical International Pvt Ltd, Pune. This is the 6th talk in the NCL Innovations Seminar Series.
When: Thursday, 27th August, 4:00pm
Where: Second Floor Lecture Hall, Main Building, National Chemical Laboratory, Pashan Road
Registration and fees: This event is free for all to attend. No registration required.
Details: Event Page

Abstract of the talk – Innovation Flow

Most of us make our daily living by generating creative ideas, solving tough technical problems and translating our ideas into inventions. Now what would give us greater satisfaction? – Innovation, i.e taking our insightful ideas and breakthrough inventions successfully to the market. How good are we at Innovation? – the present statistics are quite discouraging – typically, for every hundred good ideas, ten may lead to breakthrough inventions and one to an innovative product that meets a critical need of the customer. To accelerate the Innovation process and to maximize the Return on Innovation, we need a systematic Innovation process that will (a) focus and structure our ideation efforts (b) align our ideas to solve a critical need and ensure that the Customer sees added value and most importantly (c) give us the satisfaction of seeing our idea through the end of the Innovation Funnel.

As an inventor, I have often wondered how to bridge the gap between invention and innovation. When I got into managing technology programs, I struggled to defend and nurture those promising out-of-the box ideas that tend to get killed in conventional stage-gate processes. To create an effective Innovation strategy, I wondered how I can balance the capabilities of emerging technologies and the needs of emerging markets. I studied many Innovation processes, creativity tools, consulted with Innovation experts, researched many Innovative organizations (Google, 3M, Apple, Toyota, P & G etc) and also learnt from facilitating Innovation in R&D organizations (GE, Tata and Dow). I found that the secret to successful innovation lies in systematically growing the innovation potential of ideas.

I evolved my Innovation approach based on TRIZ – Theory of Inventive Problem Solving – to address primary concerns like:

  • How do we make sure that we are solving the right Problem?
  • How to balance Imagination Vs Knowledge and come up with creative, yet technically feasible, solutions?
  • How to learn from creative ideas and smart solutions that have solved similar problems in other domains? How to integrate this knowledge into our solution?
  • If our technical expertise / domain knowledge alone is not sufficient for Innovative Problem Solving – then what other new skills do we need to learn?
  • Is there a systematic approach to sail the Idea through various barriers and translate it in to an innovative product?

The discussion will address these prominent questions that come to our mind whenever we hear the word Innovation. I will introduce creative thinking tools like 5 Whys, 9 Windows, Reversal of Assumption, 4-Quadrants etc. We will also discuss TRIZ-based Innovation tools like Ideal Final Result (IFR), Function Maps, Contradictions, 40 Inventive Principles, Technology Evolution Trends and Evolution Potential.

About the speaker – M.V. Shankar

Shankar MV is a Physicist turned Materials Scientist. He is Principal Scientist at Dow R&D Centre, Pune. Prior to joining Dow, he has been a lead scientist at GE R&D, Bangalore for eight years. He has ten patented inventions and an award winning new solid state illumination product based on his invention. His expertise is in electronic and optical materials. He has designed and developed novel luminescent materials for application in White LEDs. He has been actively learning, practicing and teaching systematic innovation methods and TRIZ-based innovative problem solving tools. He facilitates cross-pollination of ideas, innovative problem solving and the creation of strategic intellectual property across technology domains.

His interests include physics, philosophy, psychology, creativity and technology entrepreneurship.

Contact info: Dr. Shankar MV, Email: Shankar.Venugopal07@gmail.com

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Call for Papers: ClubHack 2009 Information Security Conference

Events, , , ,

Click on logo for PuneTech wiki page on ClubHack
Click on logo for PuneTech wiki page on ClubHack

ClubHack is an initiative to bring security awareness to common people who use computers and internet in their daily life. It’s a member driven open community to make cyber security a common sense. The phenomenal growth of the Internet economy has led to a sharp increase in computer crimes and hacking incidents. ClubHack aims at making technology users aware of the risks associated with cyber transactions as well as the security measures.

ClubHack2009 is the third annual ClubHack conference and will revolve around technical presentations/demonstrations on topics from the world of Information Security. These presentations are expected to be of 40 minutes each. The schedule time for each presenter would be 50 minutes out of which 40 minutes are for the presentation & 10 for the question-answer sessions.

ClubHack is inviting submissions on technical topics or demonstrations that can be included in the conference. This is a list of suggested topics:

# Protocol / Application based vulnerability in networks and computers
# Firewall Evasion techniques
# Intrusion detection/prevention
# SPAM fighting
# Data Recovery and Incident Response
# Mobile Security (cellular technologies)
# Virus and Worms
# WLAN and Bluetooth Security
# Analysis of malicious code
# Cryptography and Cryptanalysis
# Computer forensics
# File system security
# Secure coding & code analysis
# Hardware modification
# Patch writing for vulnerabilities
# Open source hacking toolkit
# Cyber Crime & law

This is more of an indicative list, the papers submission can be on other topics also but have to be close to this & the theme of the event.

Important Dates
CFP Open: 15th August 2009
CFP Close: 15th October 2009

How to submit
Click Here

For more information about ClubHack see the PuneTech wiki page for ClubHack.

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

PuneChips Event: ASIC Verification trends and challenges – Jagdish Doma, former director of VLSI design Conexant Systems – 20 Aug

Events, punechips, , , , ,
The integrated circuit from an Intel 8742, a 8...
Image via Wikipedia

What: Trends and Challenges by Jagdish Doma, former director of VLSI design for Conexant Systems
When: Thursday, 20th August, 6:30pm to 8:00pm
Where: Venture Center, NCL Innovation Park, Pashan Road. To reach Venture Center, go past NCL towards Pashan, pass the cricket ground adjacent to NCL and then you’ll find NCL Innovation Park / Venture Center on the right hand side. Map
Registration and fees: This event is free for all to attend. No registration required.

ASIC verification – Trends and Challenges

Jagdish will discuss the ASIC verification flow, various verification and validation techniques, and strength areas and limitations of each technique and the key challenges faced by companies during the ASIC verification cycle.

About the speaker – Jagdish Doma

Jagdish served as Director of VLSI Division for Conexant Systems in Pune where he was responsible for managing diverse teams involved in design, verification, validation, implementation, physical design and software development. During his 19 year career, Jagdish has held various senoir techical positions at Texas Instruments, Cirrus Logic and AMD. He brings a wide range of experience in Architecture, Design, pre-silicon verification, post-silicon validation and leading organizations to successful product development. Jagdish holds Bachelor’s in Electrical Engineering from University of Pune and a Master’s in Electrical Engineering fromTexas A&M University.

About PuneChips

PuneChips is a special interest group on semiconductor design and applications. PuneChips was formed to foster an environment for growth of companies in the semiconductor design and applications segment in the Pune area. Our goal is to build an ecosystem similar to PuneTech for companies in this field, where they can exchange information, consult with experts, and start and grow their businesses.

PuneChips has been started by Abhijit Athavale, president and CEO of Markonix, and a high-tech marketing consultant. He has 16+ years of high-technology industry experience. Prior to Markonix, Abhijit spent over 11 years at Xilinx, Inc. in various engineering, applications and marketing roles. In his role as a marketing consultant, he has held executive management positions at several companies. He has a masters degree in electrical engineering from Texas A&M University and a bachelors degree in electrical engineering from University of Pune. He is an accomplished speaker and author of several publications including a book.

For more information, see the PuneTech wiki profile of PuneChips, and/or join the PuneChips mailing list.

Please forward this mail to anybody in Pune who is interested in semiconductors, chip design, VLSI design, chip testing, and embedded applications.

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Call for Speakers – IndicThreads Conference on Java Technologies, Pune Dec 2009

Events, Technology, , ,

indicthreads logo smallThe IndicThreads Java conference is a technology conference that happens in Pune every year. The conference has in-depth, vendor-neutral technical sessions about a wide range of topics in the Java space. If you have done some interesting work in or related to Java, you should consider submitting a proposal.

PuneTech has detailed coverage of last year’s IndicThreads Java conference. For even more details, you can see the list of speakers and the slides used in their presentations at the conference website. That should give you an idea of what this conference is about.

Here is the call for speakers reproduced from the conference website:

Call for Speakers

IndicThreads.com invites submissions for the 4th IndicThreads.com Conference On Java Technology to be held on 11th and 12th December 2009 in Pune, India. The conference is the premier independent conference on Java technology in India and is the place to be, to learn the latest in the Java world while meeting with like-minded individuals from across the industry.

IndicThreads welcomes submissions from subject experts across fields, geographic locations and areas of development. Topics of interest include new and groundbreaking technologies and emerging trends, successful practices and real world learnings.

Topics appropriate for submission to this conference include but are not restricted to the below, stated in no particular order –

1. Java Language Specs & Standards
2. Optimization, Scaling and Performance Tuning
3. Cloud Computing
4. Rich Internet Applications, Ajax and Web 2.0
5. Scripting languages for Java like JRuby, Groovy, Rhino, JavaFX.
6. Open Source Frameworks
7. Enterprise Architecture
8. Spring
9. Virtualization
10. Social Networking
11. Security
12. Agile Techniques, Extreme Programing, Test Driven Development
13. New and emerging technologies
14. Case Studies and Real World Experiences

Submission

  • Please note that marketing-oriented submissions aimed at promoting specific organizations or products will not be accepted.
  • All sessions will be between 50-90 minutes. One / both of your proposals might be accepted.
  • The audience consists mostly of senior developers and project leads. Before submission consider how your submission can provide best value to this target segment.
  • Submissions will be accepted only on the website and not through emails. Please complete the entire form including the two session proposals.
  • The decision of the conference team as regards sessions, durations, timings, speaker benefits and all related aspects will be final and binding.

Speaker Benefits

  • Complimentary Full Conference Pass
  • We will arrange for your hotel stay and cover the room tariff. Please note that hotel incidentals will not be covered.
  • We will reimburse up to Rs 5000 from the air fare or the actual, whichever is less.
  • Speaking at an IndicThreads event gets you recognition as a subject expert.

Write to [ conf AT rightrix DOT com ] in case of any other queries.

Important Dates

  • Submission Deadline – 31st August 2009
  • Conference Dates – 11 and 12 December, 2009
Enhanced by Zemanta