Category Archives: Events

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

Pune OpenCoffee Club - POCC Logo
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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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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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Key Legal Issues in InfoTech – Seminar, July 28

seap-logo-inWhat: Seminar on key legal issues in InfoTech – key clauses, law, enforcement, jurisdiction in tech agreements, and IP issues
When: 2pm to 5pm, Tuesday, 28th July
Where: Bhageerath, Persistent Systems, S.B. Road
Registration and Fees: This event is free for all. Send mail to tanvi@nishithdesai.com if you’re interested.

Details:
Software Exporters Association of Pune (SEAP) and Nishith Desai Associates will hold a seminar on various legal issues an infotech business needs to worry about. The workshop aims to address issues related to intellectual property, trade secrets, usage of open source along with insights on key clauses pertaining to technology agreements from a legal as well as a commercial perspective. The workshop would also provide insights on enforcement and jurisdiction issues which are commonly faced in cross border technology agreements.

Agenda:

  • Protection of Intellectual Property, Confidential Information, Trade Secrets – Usage of Third Party IP and Open Source. Gowree Gokhale (Partner, Nishith Desai Associates)
  • Key Clauses in Technology Agreements along with negotiating tactics. Bharat Mehta (Vice President-Legal, Oracle Financial Services Software Limited)
  • Governing Law, Enforcement and Jurisdiction Issues in Technology Agreements. Shafaq Uraizee-Sapre (Senior Associate, Nishith Desai Associates)

About the Speakers

Gowree Gokhale

Ms. Gowree Gokhale heads the IP, technology, media and entertainment law practice of the multi-skilled, research-based international law firm, Nishith Desai Associates. Her specializations also include litigation and dispute resolution, franchising, pharma and life sciences laws, commercial laws, HR laws. Ms. Gokhale has led several IP, technology and HR litigations. She has been involved in negotiations of large BPO and technology contracts. She is involved in patent oppositions and devising patent litigation strategies for clients. She has assisted international media and productions houses and pharmaceutical companies in structuring of their India operations, including IP structuring, and advice on regulatory issues. She specializes in structuring of cross border outsourcing and franchising arrangements and has negotiated several transactions both for Indian and MNC clients. Ms. Gokhale is a Solicitor and a registered Patent & Trade Mark attorney and has been practicing for the last 13 years. She is a visiting faculty at Institute of Intellectual Property Law Studies at Mumbai. She has authored research reports and articles on variety of subjects and has presented at various national and international seminars and conferences on IP, pharmaceutical, media and technology laws. She has is a regular speaker at NASSCOM TLF seminars on technology contracts, CII on enforcement of IP in India.

Bharat Mehta

Vice President – Legal at Oracle Financial Services Software Limited is an experienced professional in legal and commercial matters related to IP and IT industry worldwide. Bharat has the opportunity of interacting, negotiating and concluding business deals globally with experience spanning across functions including mergers & acquisitions, intellectual property, customers, partners, vendors and employee related matters, corporate affairs, group integration, business practices, risk management and compliance. Bharat enjoys the continuous challenge and rewarding experience of working with professionals of different worldviews. He is actively involved as a speaker at various forums in spreading awareness about intellectual property, technology contracts and compliance. He is also one of the founding members of the Technology Law Forum (TLF). He graduated out of Mumbai University and has a Degree in Law.

Shafaq Uraizee-Sapre

Ms. Shafaq Uraizee Sapre is a senior member of the Technology, Litigation & Dispute Resolution, Fund Investment and Real Estate Practice Groups at the firm. Ms. Sapre received a Bachelors and Masters degree in law from the University of Bombay. Ms. Sapre’s practice focuses on cutting edge complex cross-border litigations and international commercial arbitrations. Ms. Sapre is a leading attorney in assisting clients to reach creative and pragmatic solutions and effective dispute resolution strategies. In addition to in-house representation, Ms. Sapre represents clients in Supreme Court, High Court and respective Tribunals in a wide-range of sectors including corporate, media, entertainment, franchising and oil & gas. Ms. Sapre’s practice includes a variety of transactions with both domestic and international venture capital and private equity funds. Ms. Sapre has advised and assisted clients on issues concerning the legal aspects of structuring and restructuring investments in India and globally, documentation, private equity investments and mergers and acquisitions across a multitude of sectors. Ms. Sapre has led several legal due diligence teams and often renders opinions on issues concerning litigation, arbitration, Indian labor laws and contract law.

Ms. Sapre has spoken at the Confederation of Indian Industry and actively writes for publications such as the Indian Venture Capital Journal. Ms. Sapre is a member of the Bar Council of Maharashtra & Goa and has been practicing as a litigator at the Bombay High Court since 2000.

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Proto.in Facebook Developer Garage is free & open to all (not just proto.in attendees)

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

Unless you’ve been living in a cave, you should be aware that Proto.in, India’s premier startup event, is happening in Pune this weekend. Around the end of proto.in, there’s an event for Facebook application developers, which is actually open to all developers, not just those registered to attend proto.in. So all Pune facebook app developers, or potential facebook app developers should make a beeline for this event – a great place to meet a lot of experienced facebook developers from not just Pune, but the whole country.

Proto.in will be partnering with Facebook to organize the Facebook Developer Garage. It will have Ruchi Sanghvi, senior product manager at Facebook participating as the speaker. She will talk about how developers can create web applications on Facebook with social utility and business potential targeted towards the rapidly growing Indian market on Facebook. According to Pune Mirror Ruchi is:

a Fergusson College pass-out now settled in San Francisco. Ruchi, the product manager for Facebook News Feeds, is one of the brain’s behind Facebook’s current look.

The Garage should be useful for web developers who are interested in the Facebook developer contest (which has a total cash prize worth US$14,000. For more details on the Facebook Developer contest, please visit http://www.facebook.com/developercontestindia.)

As a passionate web developer trying to make an impact, you certainly cant miss this opportunity.

It will be at 5pm on Saturday 25th July, in the Dewang Mehta Auditorium, Persistent, S.B. Road. Just show up. It’s free, and no registration is required.

Pre-Proto Startup Networking event – July 24

Proto.in Logo
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Proto.in, the premier startup event in the country, is happening in Pune this Saturday, so the who’s who of the startup world will descend upon Pune. This is a chance for Pune’s entrepreneurs and wannapreneurs to meet interesting people. Unfortunately, proto.in had limited seats and they are all gone, so, on popular demand, proto. in has created a pre-proto networking event for all those who will not be at proto.in – to give them a chance to network with the visitors who are coming in to town for proto.in.

The event will be on Friday, 24 July, from 5pm to 7pm at Hall No. 5, MCCIA Trade Tower, ICC Complex, S.B. Road. A fee of Rs. 100 will be collected at the door. If you want to attend, send an email to Maya at maya.m@mentorsquare.com.

What to expect at the event? There will be some sort of a panel discussion on “Transforming Business Environments.” I have no idea what that means, and the topic is so generic that I’m sure the discussion will also be generic. But don’t let the prescribed agenda fool you. The agenda and panel discussion is only there to get all the people in one room. The real benefit of going to such events is the networking that happens before and after (and some of it during) the event. You meet people who can help you find customers, people who can provide some useful service to your startup, people who just generally give you some insightful piece of advice that can change the course of your startup, people who over time become advisors for your startup (we met the most important advisor of our startup at one such event).

3 hours and Rs. 100 is a low price to pay for all these opportunities.

TechStart.in: Microsoft Azure Training Program for 2009 CS graduates

Click on this icon to see all PuneTech articles related to tech education in Pune
Click on this icon to see all PuneTech articles related to tech education in Pune

As a part of the Techstart initiative (visit http://techstart.in for rationale and more details), a program for training on Application Development on the Microsoft Azure Cloud Computing platform is being offered to computer science students graduating in 2009. This initiative is based on the lines of a very successful initiative at Stanford University.The idea is that there will be a 6 to 8 week Azure training and application building course consisting of classroom lectures interspersed with self-study programming assignments. The course will be co-ordinated by Monish Darda, Director and CTO of Websym technologies, with help from Persistent Systems, the Pune User Group (a Microsoft Technologies user group in Pune), and will be run by volunteers from across the industry,

To facilitate this, a “Train the Trainers” program is being planned, to build mentoring expertise for people who want to volunteer to help in this initiative. This is a free program, and volunteers would be needed to teach the course and/or guide the students. This needs people who have industry experience and are ready to spare some time for teaching/handholding/mentoring the students on the Azure platform. To participate, you should have the following prerequisites:

a. Basics of .NET framework platform

b. Basics of C#.net and Visual Studio IDE

c. Basic Understanding of WCF (windows communication framework)

Volunteers should be able to spare approximately a total of 16 hours during the eight week TechStart program, tentatively scheduled to begin on July 27.

The Train the Trainers program details follow:

Date: Saturday, July 18, 2009 – 9.30 a.m. to 6.00 p.m.

Venue: Persistent Systems Ltd.

‘Aryabhata Pingala’

9A, Erandavane, Near Nal Stop, Off Karve Road

Pune 411004

To register please mail kaustubh_bhadbhade@persistent.co.in with “TechStart: Microsoft Azure Training Program”

First PIRST: Pune Information Retreival and Semantic Technology meeting – July 18

Click on the image to get all PuneTech articles related to the Pune Open Coffee Club
Click on the image to get all PuneTech articles related to the Pune Open Coffee Club

PIRST – the Pune Information Retreival and Semantic Technology – is a special interest group within POCC (the Pune Open Coffee Club), that is focused on search technologies, and the semantic web. PIRST has it’s first kickoff meeting this Saturday, July 18th from 9:30am-2pm, at SICSR, Model Colony. The event is free for all to attend, but you must register here.

This meetup is geared towards learning about IR & ST, networking of professionals interested / active in this area and brainstorming on various possibilities and ideas in this area. The following information is tentative:

Speakers

  • Shashikant Kore, Co-founder, Bandhan.com
  • Abhay Shete, Founder, FortyTwo
  • Rajan Chandi, Founder, OpenWeb Labs
  • Bhasker Kode, Founder, Hover.in
  • Atul Tulshibagwale, Founder, Web2rank

If you are interested in speaking at this event, please contact Atul Tulshibagwale (atultulshi gmail)

Agenda

Each individual talk is expected to be 45 minutes, with 15 minutes for Q&A.

  • 9:30am – 10:15am – Survey of startups in IR&ST – Atul Tulshibagwale
  • 10:15am – 11:00am – Survey of various semantic technologies – Rajan Chandi
  • 11:00am – 11:30am – Tea Break
  • 11:30am – 12:15pm – – Lucene primer – Shashikant Kore
  • 12:15pm – 1:30pm – Roadmap of required Math – Abhay Shete
  • 1:30pm – 2:00pm – Panel: Future of IR&ST – All Speakers
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TechStart Internship Mela: Connect with 200 CS graduates for your projects – 18th July

Click on this icon to see all PuneTech articles related to tech education in Pune
Click on this icon to see all PuneTech articles related to tech education in Pune

Last week we wrote about the hundreds of CS engineering graduates who are temporarily idle, and the techstart initiative where we are hoping to connect up companies, startups or individuals who can use these engineers for their projects. To facilitate this, an ‘Internship Mela’ will be held on Saturday, 18th July, from 2pm to 6pm, at the Dewang Mehta Auditorium, Persistent, S.B. Road.

The basic idea behind the ‘Internship Mela’ is as follows:

  • All those who would like to find engineers for their projects are invited to attend
  • All engineers who are interested in getting internships will attend
  • From 2pm to 4pm: Each potential company/startup/mentor/guide gets to present to the engineers for 3 minutes. Give a quick introduction of yourself, your company, what projects you plan to do with the interns, what kind of skills you are looking for, and whether you will be paying a stipend or not, and your contact info.
  • From 4pm to 6pm: Open networking. The potential interns will walk up to the mentors that they are interested and discuss details and set up a follow up meeting.

The idea is that this is a marketplace designed to allow mentors to find students quickly.

To register as a company or individual offering internships, please follow these steps

  • Join the techstart mailing list (click on “Join this group” link on the right side of the page)
  • After joining, go to the TechStart Internship Mela Registration Page and add yourself to the list there. (Click on the “Edit this page” button, then add your info just above the last line in the list.)
  • Come to Dewang Mehta Auditorium, Persistent, S.B. Road at 1:45pm on 18th July. Prepare a 3-minute talk that can help the potential interns decide whether they are interested in your project. Be as specific as possible. (Note: there will be no slides/projector)

Students interested in this program – just show up at the venue (see details above). No registration required. Bring multiple copies of your resume.

About TechStart

Anand Deshpande of Persistent started this initiative to help out the computer science engineering students who graduated in 2009, but had their job offers deferred or rescinded. The idea is to give the engineers some industry experience, and at the same time allow the industry to get some useful work done. See http://techstart.in/ for details. TechStart consists of many volunteers from across the industry, and a whole bunch of other Pune organizations (like CSI Pune, Pune Open Coffee Club) are also helping out.

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