On Friday, based on an Economic Times report, we reported that Pune-based enterprise backup software provider Druva has received $10 million in funding from Nexus VP. Unfortunately this news appears to be inaccurate.
Here is a comment from Jaspreet Singh, CEO of Druva:
Thanks Navin, but this news is not very accurate. This was unethically leaked and then misreported by Peerzada (abrar.shz@timesgroup.com) of ET for some cheap thrills.
Not sure when would people this these grow up and stop screwing lives of entrepreneurs who are already fighting against all the odds.
You have been a great supporter and I would give you a call sometime next week to give accurate information and some more good news.
Basically, Druva is indeed in an advanced stage in their second round funding process, but it is not done yet, and they cannot talk about the details of the amount or the investors involved. The details that came out in the ET report are inaccurate.
We wish Druva luck, and hope to hear the official good news sometime soon.
Druva is a purely homegrown startup. This is not a company started by someone in the US setting up a development center in India.
Druva is a product startup. It is not a services company. Hence, it has a potential for exponential growth and returns.
Druva is not done by serial entrepreneurs. The co-founders are all first-time entrepreneurs who quit their big-company jobs to start Druva. This should give hope to all the first-time entrepreneurs in Pune.
Druva has been one of PuneTech’s favorite startups and we have covered it extensively in the past, so, frankly, there isn’t much new that we’ll be able to say about it. Instead, we’ll simply point readers to the older articles:
Technology Overview – Druva Continuous Data Protection – An article about Continuous Data Protection, the first product that Druva came out with. As far as we understand, Druva is no longer selling this product. This is an interesting lesson on how software startups have to ‘pivot’ and change their product line in response to market demands, and how things can go in a completely different direction than what founders originally envisaged
We wish Druva luck, and although getting another round of VC funding is not as good an indicator of success as an IPO or an acquisition, we would still like to repeat what we said in April 2010:
We now have in our midst a startup success story that will hopefully inspire a 100 new software product startups in Pune.
PICT’s IEEE Student Branch publishes a tech newsletter, called PING, that is distributed to various students and faculty of engineering colleges all over Pune. In the interest of increasing industry-student connections, we would like to encourage industry professionals to write some articles to be published in PING.
Pune Institute of Computer Technology (PICT), which is one of the top engineering colleges in the city, has an IEEE Student Branch which is one of the more active student groups around. Every semester, they hold a big event. In the odd semester, they have Credenz, a 3-day tech event with competitions, and talks and other events, and in the even semester they have Credenz Tech Days, a series of technical seminars. Both these events are attended by students from all over Maharashtra, and also students from other parts of India.
PING is published to coincide with Credenz and Credenz Tech days, and goes to over a 1000 students and faculty from various engineering colleges.
This time, we think it would be a good idea for PING to have articles from experienced industry professionals in addition to student written articles. The students have suggested the following topics in which they would like to see articles from Industry:
This only represents the list that the students came up with. But you should spend some time thinking about other topics that students should know about, and write an article on that topic.
Here is why we think you should take the effort of writing an article:
To help students: For many students who read PING, this will probably be their first exposure to what people in industry think. It gives them exposure, it gives them ideas, and you might inspire someone to take up an interesting subject.
To let students know about the cool things your company is working on. What better way to ‘market’ your company, than a technical article on an interesting topic, to be read by a 1000 students who were motivated enough to attend a tech fest? (But please make the article about the topic, not about your company. The ‘About the Author’ section can contain information about the company.)
To establish yourself as an expert in an area. Not only will these articles go in the newsletter, but will also go up on websites that students as well as professionals read. This is a good way to get some visibility for yourself.
Please write an article, and (send it to us)[mailto:punetech@punetech.com] at punetech@punetech.com. If you’re the kind of person who is good technically but not so good at writing article, don’t worry, contact us and we’ll help with the writing part. If you would prefer to simply talk to someone on the phone about the topic you’re interested in, and would like that someone to write the article based on the phone conversation, contact us and we can work something out.
Many industry professionals accuse today’s students of not being interested. Well, here is a bunch of students who are interested – now it is your turn to reciprocate.
This is a request to help me to progress towards the completion of my Doctoral Research. I am at the Data Collection stage of my PhD and your help is sought to fill up a questionnaire pertaining to my study.
Purpose of the study: My endeavour is to find the reasons and strategies for Employee Attrition in IT & ITES sector in Pune.
Confidentiality: I assure you that the information provided by you will be truly used for study purpose.
Thank you for your kind co-operation and contribution. If you wish to know the outcome of this study, please mention your email address (optional) in the questionnaire. You will receive a copy of the final analysis. Giving your email address is optional – I will not use the email addresses for any purpose other than sending out results of the study.
(This is an article by guest author Yogesh Pathak. Yogesh is founder of Path Knowledge, a consulting, advisory, and research firm based in Pune.)
The last 2 decades have been wonderful for the software industry in India, with a terrific contribution to India’s economy and aspirations of it’s middle class. This article reflects (in short) on these 2 decades, provides a perspective on how the next decade could be, and implications for careers.
1990-2000
This was the first real ‘growth’ decade for India’s software industry, though the industry’s pioneers (e.g. TCS) had been around for a while. It was a golden decade for careers in the sense that demand for skilled manpower consistently exceeded supply, salaries were always in the top quartile (relative to other professional careers), and companies experienced tremendous growth. The growth of the PC platform, the client-server revolution, and early stages of the Internet revolution, with bubbles like ERP and Y2K to boot, all contributed to IT hypergrowth globally, and since India was a part of it, we benefited hugely from this. Virtually all of India’s global contribution happened in software services, not products.
2000-2010
This was also a growth decade, though more so for the larger companies. In some ways, the big 3 offshore companies (Infy, Wipro, TCS) perfected the art of scale-up while leaving many of their SME competitors behind (which anyway grew handsomely). As India experienced more global integration, so did it’s software industry. Body-shopping gave way to true offshoring. Some decent product companies emerged. Indian IT’s technology time-lag with US vanished. On the negative side, the impact of two global downturns (2000-02 and 2008-09) was felt directly in India’s software circles. Careers in India’s software industry had to be charted a little more carefully through this decade (unlike being handed on a platter). This was because higher supply of skilled manpower created better resource availability, and also because companies focused on fresh graduates to keep their costs down. A lot more BE/MCA/BCS/MCS or other such programs in CS/IT were launched providing more quantity of graduates, but not necessarily better quality. Companies had to actually increase their investments in training. The product startup phenomenon emerged in early part of the decade at various IT cities in India, and became much more visible in the later part, thanks to the web 2.0 bandwagon and a general growth in entrepreneurship. Whether this phenomena generates true economic output remains to be seen. Overall, this was still a decade of happy, secular growth for companies, as well as employees.
The next decade (2010-20):
The next decade could be different and interesting not the least because of following reasons. These are not claimed to be authoritative predictions but more like indicative trends and observations.
The IT platforms we are familiar with, are undergoing churn at a higher velocity. It’s cloud and virtualization at the back-end and mobile, tablets, cameras, sensors, and other futuristic gizmos at the front end. This impacts IT business models, their software needs, their development platforms, and so on.
The cost of software development continues to go down. This is due to falling prices of hardware, the efficiencies due to virtualization, the growth of open source, more startups (read: cheaper products), and a generally high supply of IT graduates, especially in India. Due to this, globally, ideation and product development itself stand to be commoditized, putting a stretch on how companies will differentiate themselves. Many may give away their products for free while not fully figuring out alternative sources of revenues like ads, services, revenue shares, and so on. This has implications for the entire ecosystem. e.g. In case of valuing enterprise software product companies, real monetizable customer base (and future revenue streams from them) will matter far more than the IP/uniqueness of the product.
For all sorts of products, IT and non-IT, product development cycles will shrink. This puts pressure on development teams and demands high amounts of efficiency, innovation, and automation. This creates opportunities for tools, testing, and solutions companies.
Some opportunities for new products include: reduction in energy consumption across all forms of IT, security, data organization and analysis, and personalized healthcare. e.g. As IT becomes pervasive, finding its total energy consumption footprint will become an increasingly complex problem.
The value associated with post-graduate degrees in Computer Science/related fields continues to decline, because you can always pick up “hot” skills in the industry if you are motivated and thus increase your market value. Formal education will matter less and less. The phenomena of bright programmer kids dropping out of school to do jobs/startups will happen in India on a wider scale.
However, for those interested in R&D, post-graduate education will continue to serve as a great formal introduction to the method of research and the span of their research area. Knowing how to do R&D may not be enough — how to commercialize it will matter equally.
Large enterprises, the mainstay customers for IT services companies, will become more demanding. They will want IT development to be more predictable (like manufacturing) in quality and costs. This will need more process/tools innovation among their vendors and also increase automation. Growth in automation and new tools may eliminate many IT plumbing, BPO, and KPO project opportunities, putting pressure on services revenues, though this will tend to happen gradually. Large IT/BPO services firms will need to cut a lot of fat among their billable and non-billable resources, especially if they can develop a smart cadre of leaders to run their projects and service lines. Human-based BPO in particular will soon become a commercially unattractive business sector.
‘Early and rapid skills acquisition’ will become important for students and fresh graduates if they want to survive in this industry. Downturns will be more pronounced and more people will lose jobs when that happens. So graduates will need to plan careers carefully and figure out the entire bouquet of skills (not just tech skills) for them to grow in a company. At the same time, due to more R&D, product development, and entrepreneurship happening in India, opportunities for graduates will increase. As always, entire new sectors will also emerge and they will need IT (Think of uploading photos to Facebook as a space tourist 🙂
About the Author – Yogesh Pathak
Yogesh Pathak is the founder of Path Knowledge, a consulting, advisory, and research firm based in Pune, and works in providing the following services to clients:
Venture capital fundraising advisory and strategic consulting to startup companies
Knowledge services to global clients: Business analysis, technology and market research, financial analysis, etc
Management consulting services to clients in India and globally
Do you have some cool new technology that you would like to showcase? In that case, now is your chance to show it for free at the India International Trade Fair 2010 that’s happening in Delhi starting on 14th November, 2010.
Science and Technology Park (STP) Pune, wants to give you a stall at the India International Trade Fair, 2010, at Delhi. Are you eligible? Click on the image to see more PuneTech posts related to Indian Government Organizations.
Basically, Maharashtra has been allocated 11000 sq. ft. at this trade fair to show the coolest stuff from Maharashtra, and out of that 3000 sq. ft. has been allocated to Pune. The Science and Technology Park (STP) has been given the responsibility of using this space to highlight the achievements of Pune. They have decided to try to find a few innovative companies/technologies and showcase them (for free).
Specifically:
It should be a company or product that actually exists (not just an idea or a concept)
It should be something that is interesting or innovative. Something that shows that Maharashtra is on the cutting edge
Specific domains of interest include CleanTech, GreenTech, Environment, e-Governance, m-Governance; but entries need necessarily not be limited to these domains
The Trade Fair starts on 14th November, and will be at Pragati Maidan, Delhi
If you are a company who fits this description, or if you know some other company who does, please get in touch with Rohit Srivastwa (rohit.srivastwa @ scitechpark.org.in), Advisor, Science & Technology Park, Pune. If you are a company/product from Mumbai or elsewhere in Maharashtra, don’t give up hope. You can still apply, and if found interesting enough, they’ll try to accommodate you.
Entrepreneurs, investors, government agencies, domestic companies & MNC executives in India need to think beyond “hi-tech” ventures and creation of IP and should focus instead of adapting existing technologies for Indian needs, points out Kaushik Gala in a new essay he published on his website. Kaushik is a Business Development Manager at Pune-based startup incubator Venture Center, so he does spend a lot of time talking to and thinking about all the players of our technology and startup ecosystem mentioned in the first sentence of this paragraph.
Kaushik Gala, Business Development Manager at Venture Center occasionally writes essays on issues related to startups and small businesses in India. Click on the photo to see more of his essays, and his website
The whole article is definitely worth reading, and we give here a few excerpts from the article to whet your appetite:
So, will hi-tech entrepreneurs & startups drive economic growth & wealth creation in India? Consider this assertion by economist John Kay:
Advancing technology is the principal determinant of economic growth for the twenty or so rich countries of the world. However most of the world is well inside that technological frontier. For these countries, prospects of economic growth depend little on technology and principally on advances in their economic, political and social infrastructure.
Over the two centuries of rapid economic growth in rich states, the pattern has been for one or two countries to join the group of advanced states every decade or two. In the last fifty years or so these new members of the rich list include Italy, Finland and Ireland within Europe and the first Asian economies (Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore) to operate at this technological frontier.
Later, he points out that there are three kinds of tech startups in India: 1) Technology innovators (who are creating new IP at the cutting edge of science & technology), 2) Technology imitators (who are reverse engineering technology from elsewhere and implementing a copy here), and 3) Technology adapters (who take a foreign technology, and then adapt it to Indian conditions. This usually involves significant changes, and there’s usually a key piece of (non-technology) innovation required to make it successful locally).
He gives this example of technology adaption:
My favorite example is Sarvajal. They sell clean drinking water – but with many twists:
They’ve developed a (patent pending!) device called Soochak which combines existing water purification technology with cloud computing.
Their innovative ‘distributed’ business model uses pre-payment, franchising, branding, etc. to make it profitable to sell relatively affordable water to remote rural areas.
Success for Sarvajal is as much – or more – dependent on understanding the psychology of rural customers and village entrepreneurs (franchisees) as it is on the technology.
Kaushik ends by saying that while all three avatars of technology enterprises are required for wealth creation in India, being an adopter/adapter in India offers far more opportunities to excel.
(Recently, Shirish Deodhar, a well-known figure in the Pune technology and startup community, published a book, From Entreprenurs to Leaders, which makes the point that while the last 10 years saw the rise of several billion dollar software services companies in India, the next 10 years will see the rise of billion dollar software product companies from India. The book explores the dynamics, challenges, and opportunities at all the different stages that these companies must pass through.
This book by, Shirish Deodhar, Pune-serial-entrepreneur, aims to provide guidance to the next generation of founders who will build India's software product companies.
We have reproduced here (with permission from the publisher, Tata McGraw Hill) an excerpt from the book. Here Shirish talks about how to build up a high quality engineering team in early stage companies – basically, those companies that have gone past the startup stage, and now have revenue between 2 and 20 crores. At this time, the company has to move past the founders and few early engineers to a team with the right roles and responsibilities defined. This excerpt gives advice on how to do this specifically tailored for the Indian context.)
High Quality Engineering Team
Do you want a collection of brilliant minds or a brilliant collection of minds?
– R. Meredith Belbin
Good ideas become great products with the right engineering team. It starts with the technical leadership. Initially, this might have one or more founders. A larger company may have a Director or VP of Engineering responsible for product development activities.
Smart engineers being what they are, they only look up to someone who is like a ‘God’ for them. This means the engineering head has to be knowledgeable about the product and technologies, a highly capable software architect, innovative, adept at resolving low level technical problems and good at motivating people. In a bigger company, the person will be less hands-on and more experienced at managing people (engineers, clients, company management) and logistics of product development.
Like an orchestra that requires a mix of instruments, the team should have the right combination of engineers. In the beginning, the ideal combination is a product architect and designer and a team of mid-level and junior engineers with required skills, high aptitude and right attitude. The composition will change as the company evolves. Start-ups first need innovative, experienced and independent developers. Then, one adds people who are good at getting detailed work done with some supervision. Later, junior developers and those with different skills such as testers and support engineers are required.
Teams need a few smart ‘techies’ who are great at conceptualizing new ideas, implementing them the first time, and resolving complex problems that may come up. But you should not have too many of them as they get bored easily. The rest should have solid temperaments, and be good at systematically executing assigned tasks to high quality. The high performers of both kinds, innovative or solid, have to be nurtured. This should not be at the expense of others, since ultimately it is teams that win games.
The test of a great team is a sense of common purpose combined with healthy respect for diversity, and the ultimate reward is a winning product.
Growing the Engineering Team at VERITAS India
I faced the challenge of building a strong engineering organization after the acquisition of my first company (Frontier Software). In February 1999, I became responsible for VERITAS Software’s India subsidiary. VERITAS in US had grown rapidly to $200 million, 2000 employees and many products. However, the India team consisted of 40 engineers in 2-3 teams, which was relatively insignificant in overall numbers. I was assigned the task of transforming the Pune subsidiary into an integral part of the global organization within three years.
VERITAS was in the technically challenging niche space of storage software. The India subsidiary had been looking for senior engineers with domain expertise in storage and strong technical skills in Unix systems. These skills were hard to find, and hence the team had grown slowly. The task was relatively easier for other products such as data protection, which needed expertise in Windows and Unix middleware, UI development, Java and C++. All teams wanted test/QA and automation engineers. Finally, experienced engineering managers were critical for the new product teams.
In India, it was very difficult to find experienced engineers with a product background and who were still technically strong. The Indian software services industry was growing at phenomenal rate, and computer science graduates with experience were in short supply. Companies encouraged technical people to become project managers after 3-5 years of experience. This in turn led to a belief that the career growth required transitioning from technology to management. This was fine for services, but exactly the opposite of what product companies needed.
In this scenario, we adopted a pyramid-style staffing approach. To create the foundation, we went to the IITs, IISc, BITS Pilani and top 5 engineering colleges in Pune. We pulled out all stops to ensure that we were among the first 3 companies to be invited for campus interviews, so that we could hire the best graduates. VERITAS was not well known in India, so we made presentations highlighting the remarkable growth and technical achievements of the company. Each campus was visited by ex-students and few senior managers. We offered attractive salaries and stock options. At the IITs we focused on M-Tech (Computer Science) students. They were temperamentally more mature, some had previous work experience and, unlike the B-Techs, did not aspire to go abroad.
Our tests were difficult and interviews were rigorous. This created a ‘techie’ image for the company, and the best candidates wanted to get in. We recruited over 75 engineers each year, for 3 years in a row (2000-02). The middle layer, which required senior engineers, took the longest time. Initially, it was filled with lateral promotions from existing teams, and selective outside recruitment. VERITAS growing reputation as the fastest growing global technology enterprise, and our relatively high compensation, helped us cherry-pick some good talent from all over India. Over time, many of the outstanding M-Tech campus hires grew into the senior and lead engineer roles.
The top of the pyramid required engineering managers. The criteria were 12+ years of experience at product companies, strong technical skills, high emotional maturity, and good people management capabilities. We did not insist on storage or systems expertise.
This strategy of relying heavily on campus hires had significant risks, and was questioned by many. To make it work, we promoted the concept of ‘each one, mentor one’. Experienced engineers guided one or two freshers besides managing their own work. It demanded extra effort from the seniors, but they delivered. By late 2001, most of the campus recruits had become star contributors, delivering value far in excess of what we had anticipated. Many had also raised their eyebrows, when we decided to hire managers with no storage or systems background. But, they too were excelling in managing delivery, communication with US, and maintaining high performance and motivation within their teams.
In four years, the India subsidiary had become strategic to the company, with nearly 500 employees in 16 product teams, representing 22% of worldwide engineering. At a company meeting, the CEO commented on VERITAS Pune as an outstanding engineering location, which created a competitive advantage for the company. On campuses and in the Pune IT community, we were widely considered to be the preferred employer.
Smart Strategies at Small Companies
You don’t have to be a well-known or a high paying company, to get the best talent. The pyramid approach is also valid for small product companies. You need great product architects and people managers at the top, few competent technical leads in the middle, and a talented pool of engineer with 0-3 years of experience. The ratio between levels should be around 1:6.
Bulk of the hiring in India is still for services companies. But the product culture is beginning to seep into the psyche of software professionals. The most coveted jobs are at subsidiaries of global product organizations. The younger generation is also willing to join small Indian product ventures because they know that the work there is often more exciting than at large services firms. A career food chain exists, with engineers preferring well-known companies. A product venture will find it easy to hire engineers from those lower in the food chain – smaller companies (product or services). Hiring from large services firms is also feasible with more and more professionals aspiring to do something more creative than an endless series of IT projects.
Indian product companies can also bring in capable senior talent from global product subsidiaries, where they often face a glass ceiling effect. At captives, as 100% subsidiaries are called, most high level product roadmap and architecture decisions are taken at headquarters. The teams in India are responsible for implementation. This gap is partly because India teams lack access to, and the knowledge of, customer requirements. Hence the top talent there is itching for greater empowerment and opportunity to shape a complete product. Salaries at multinational subsidiaries are quite high. But some seniors may be willing to take pay cuts and join for a reasonable combination of salary and equity.
Like with customers, you must market your company to prospective hires. Komli1 has done a good job at this. The founders themselves are very accomplished, with degrees from Harvard University and IIT. Later they were joined by the former CFO of eBay India. As part of the hiring effort and branding, Komli organized an Algorithm writing contest (‘AlgoGod’). This created good publicity, especially in the IITs, from where they hired eight engineers in their first year (2007). Their employee policies are generous, including unlimited vacation (they trust their employees to know when they need a break), health coverage, and stock options.
Shirish has over 25 years of software industry experience in US and India, and has incubated and led several IT companies through rapid business growth.
His two previous companies merged with global majors – In-Reality Software with Symphony Services Inc. and Frontier Software with VERITAS Software (now Symantec Corp.). Subsequently, as head of their Pune subsidiaries, he was instrumental in scaling revenues and growing the team size to over 500 employees in 3.5 years each.
Shirish did his B-Tech (EE) from IIT Mumbai, followed by a Master’s degree from USA. He has a US patent, several excellence awards, ten technical papers, and a book titled ‘From Entrepreneurs to Leaders’ published by McGraw-Hill.
(This article is a guest post by Parag Shah and first appeared on his blog. It is reproduced here with permission. Parag is a senior software engineer, who has his own one-person software company. In addition, he is also very interested in utilizing new media technologies such as blogs, podcasts, and screencasts to create a personalized, self paced, learning environment. He is in the process of creating mentoring services that use new media technologies, for helping software developers improve their programming skills. In this article he talks about how you can get for free the same education that a student of a Masters degree in the US could get. He is planning on going through it himself, and hopes you will join him.)
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Since my formal education, a lot of advances have taken place in software development. I have been able to keep up with a few with regular reading and practice. But a lot of this learning has been a bit random, and as a result a bit dissipated as well. I feel like I want to engage in continuous learning, in a more organized manner.
Over the years there are several core concepts which I have forgotten because I have not been able to use them in my regular work. I feel like relearning those concepts.
I think the volume and content of both these can constitute a masters course in Computer Science. But I do not want to go back to school. Not because there is anything wrong with school – I had a great time in grad school. But here’s why…
I don’t want to go back to school because I want to define the courses I want to learn, and not pick up from what’s offered.
I don’t want to go back to school because I want to be able to learn at my own pace, which at times may be slower than 1 course per semester.
I don’t want to go back to school because I do not want to spend a fortune learning stuff which I can learn myself using free resources.
I don’t want to go back to school because I would rather create online/social credentials than get a school certificate.
I don’t want to go back to school because I want to demonstrate that a person can not only get knowledge but also credentials if they engage in disciplined self-study and leave learning trails on the Internet.
So this time I am doing a DIY (Do-It-Yourself) masters in Computer Science. so I can refresh things I have forgotten and learn new technologies and concepts which have gained importance in recent times, in an organized way.
I did a Masters in Computer Science more than a decade back. Since then, Internet, communication technologies, and social networking, have made it possible for someone to do a similar program all by themselves, using open courseware, and social learning.
By doing this program, I am not only planning to enhance my own knowledge, but am also hoping to show how one can get a Master’s education worth of knowledge, and credentials, by self learning, and without spending a fortune. Here’s a very brief statement of purpose.
My DIY Learning Process:
I have created a learning plan which outlines at a high level the topics I want to learn. I will study one or two topics at a time, and at a manageable pace, given other work commitments.
Once the topics to learn have been identified, I will identify learning resources, forums, and mentors for that topic.
A very basic study plan is to study the material, and make notes of my understanding, as well as questions and thoughts, I get in my mind as I am learning. I will make these notes available on a special blog. This blog will serve as a personal knowledge base (I can refer to it in the future), as well as a learning trail (for proof of study and understanding).
All the homework I do while I am taking a course will be made available in the public domain. I will either post it on my blog, or if the homework involves coding, on a public open source repository such as Github. I will also do one or more projects to practice the entire body of knowledge as a whole and publish that too in the public domain.
I will also create presentations of what I learn, and make them available in the public domain.
I will connect with mentors who are experts in the topic I am learning. Depending on their time availability I will request them to help me identify gaps in my understanding, and validate my knowledge.
When I have doubts, I will ask questions on Internet forums. If my questions are not answered satisfactorily on the forums, I will refer them to my mentors.
A person can have several reasons for learning. One is for the knowledge (either for the joy of knowing something, or for more practical application of the knowledge), and another for establishing credentials, so someone else may entrust us with work which requires such knowledge. A self learned person may have the knowledge, but may lack credentials to prove it. It is also possible for a person studying in a silo to think he has grokked what he just learned, when in reality he may not have understood the matter properly. To be able to provide proof of knowledge as well as to validate my learning with other practitioners, I plan to engage in what can be loosely classified as social learning.
I will do the following to document my learning and to engage with the community of practitioners, in the hope of validating my knowledge and establishing credentials for what I learn:
Answer questions on forums
Blog my study notes, and clearly articulate my takeaway from all the lectures I view, or text I read
Create presentations and post them on YOUTube, or other video sharing services
Publish homework on open source code repositories such as GitHub, etc
Request my mentors to quiz me to help me find gaps in my understanding of a topic. I will publish the quiz as audio/video and request the mentor to post their feedback in the public domain
Take quizzes and tests wherever possible and economical
So I am leaving these learning crumbs on various places on the Internet, but I need something to bring everything together. Something which can serve as the focal point, or a lens into all my learning. I created a wiki site to serve as the focal point.
Have you been meaning to learn something yourself? Perhaps you can do your own DIY course in whatever interests you. Here is a lens into my DIY experiment.
About the Author – Parag Shah
Parag has an M.S. in Computer Science from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and over 12 years of industry experience developing software and several years experience training developers in Java, and software design principles. Parag’s current obsession is to show that it is possible to do a DIY masters in Computer Science using open courseware and social learning principles. Check out his experiment at http://opencs.wikidot.com.
The next batch of Mentor India is starting in July, and the entrance exam is on 4th July. Interested students may register here
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From Mentor India’s webpage:
Mentor India is a fusion of the cultural heritage of the ancient Gurukul system with modern methods of teaching and learning. This unique concept emphasizes experiential learning by the Shishya with the Guru skillfully facilitating it. Thus, students of this program would be paying from the day one but in the form of their contribution on live projects.
Being a Software Development & Consulting firm Knowledge Quest Infotech has a strong background of technology, thus enabling students in cultivating their technical roots.
Here are highlights of the program from the KQ InfoTech website:
Mentor India Program ensures that the students learn and earn with upcoming technology
Students don’t need to pay any fees and their training is paid by work on live projects
Students can start earning within 6 months of their program based on performance
Exposure to live projects along one year work experience
Placement opportunity with KQ Infotech and other technology companies
Course completion certification
Any student with one of these degrees is eligible: MCA,MSc CS/IT/Tech,MCM,BE/BTech. Candidates will be selected on the basis of a written technical and aptitude written test, followed by a technical and personal interview.
