Tag Archives: community

Peepaal – Bringing Industry and Academics Together

January 8, 2009In Depth, Overviewscommunity, education, engineering, students, user groupsNavin Kabra

This is the third in PuneTech’s Improving Education series of posts detailing the efforts being taken by people in the tech industry in Pune to give our students a chance at giving their career a solid foundation by acquiring skills that are valued in the industry with guidance from experienced mentors from the industry. The first in the series was Techstart.in, a program to nurture the passions of students by guiding them to implement specific, and interesting projects. The second was KQInfoTech’s Post Graduate Diploma in Systems Programming where the students don’t actually pay for the course, but end up being funded by industry in return for completing projects.

The third is “Peepaal – Continuous Community Learning” is an online and offline community of industry professionals, college faculty, and students that aims at providing continuous guidance to students through knowledge, best practices and processes. This is a description of Peepaal in the words of one of the founders:

1. Introduction – Bringing Industry and Academics Together

Bill Gates (Windows) , Steve Jobs(Mac, iPod, iPhone), Larry Page & Sergey Brin (Google), Orkut Büyükkökten (Orkut), Mark Zuckerburg (Facebook) , Sabeer Bhatia (Hotmail) apart from being successful have one important fact in common. They were all young when they dreamed of transforming the world into a better place to live. The truth is the pioneers in the technology field have been youngsters who have time and again brought new path breaking perspectives and solutions.

After 25 years in the IT field India has become the outsourcing hub of the world albeit with some deficiencies. On the pioneering front we are still some steps behind. Why in spite having such a large pool of vastly talented students are we still lagging behind? This is a million dollar question. But the answer to the question is easy.

Our students have always learned in a vacuum far away from the reality. Firstly they only have a very distant view of the needs of the industry and secondly they have passive view on the problems faced by the people and society. Good industrial skills are needed to become successful professionals of the IT industry. Identifying practical problems and solving them will make the leaders and pioneers of tomorrow.

Peepaal aims to become that easily accessible Bridge between the students and the industry. Peepaal aims to become that great ladder on which the pioneers and leaders of tomorrow will climb and make a difference to the society we live in. Peepaal aims to become that Guru who will always show the right path to the students. Peepaal aims to become that Family who will nurture the students to become as independent as possible. Peepaal aims to become that Friend who will bring students with similar thoughts and interest together.

2. Do our talented students need improvement? Can it be done?

The Peepaal initiative was born out of our various interactions with students, faculty and our experience with freshers entering the industry. Each of these experiences reemphasized the significant need for Industry to provide a very strong collaborative role in shaping students and supporting faculty in delivering industry relevant knowledge to students to ensure they are more well rounded professionals by the time they enter the industry. It was also clear that this is not possible without continuous support from the industry and a collaborative model for delivering knowledge, best practices and processes.

While there are a number of areas that require focus we have identified some core focus areas for Peepaal and use projects as a mechanism for being able to deliver these improvements.

Why Projects? Well Projects have been something the students have been actively working on during their course curriculum and their is a significant focus on projects among students and faculty and we think it is a great mechanism to deliver knowledge. The issue however is that the current process of executing projects leaves a lot to be desired.

We expect to significantly alter the way student projects are executed and help them in the following:

Innovate: Projects can be a key medium to innovate and learn new ideas and principles and apply them in real world. We expect Peepaal guided projects to be able to help students to Innovate in the real world and follow cutting edge technology trends. In addition we believe the core CS fundamental concepts are key to ensuring that students deliver value from their project. Concepts like Data Structures, DBMS, operating Systems for example have to be understand and applied well on projects so that students learn by doing.
Execute: If a project does not succeed, the value of the effort is reduced to naught and it turns into an academic exercise. There are various industry proven methods like “Proof of Concept” implementation which helps support this. We expect the Peepaal Barcamps and the online portal to serve as checkpoints and support mechanism to significantly increase the number of successful projects.
Showcase: While an Idea looks great on paper and even after it is successfully executed it all boils down to how well you can showcase it. This applies to student projects as well. There is a considerable lack of awareness of the need and techniques to successfully showcase a project to an audience. Through a continuous stream of Barcamps and presentations we expect to significantly raise the bar on project presentations.

3. Objectives of Peepaal

How does Peepaal plan to solve the problem areas? Following are the high level steps Peepaal is undertaking at a brisk pace:

Establish strong collaboration between students and the industry to bring the students into reality.
Establish strong collaboration between students in various campuses.
Engage the faculty in healthy discussions and suggest solutions to the problems they face to enable successful projects.
Help students in the entire life cycle of their projects.
Provide technical and industrial knowledge,best practices to the students in an easy to understand format.
Compliment the students academic education with the learning and applications of the latest trends and technologies.
Provide guidance to the students in every manner so that they do not have to reinvent the wheel like the students of the past.
Encourage innovative ideas from the students that will have profound effect on the society we live in.
Encourage discussions so that students open up to share problems and seek solutions.

4. Peepaal Online Portal

Peepaal online portal http://www.peepaal.org/campus provides the much needed platform where the students, faculty and the industry come together. Following are the objectives it aims to meet:

Establish a strong communication mechanism between the students and the industry. Students, Faculty post questions on the discussion forums and the industry experts answer them in a simple easy to understand format.
Provide Students with articles that give them insight on the latest trends and technologies.
Prevent Students from re-inventing the wheel by suggesting them right tools,techniques and designs.
Provide Students with a forum to improve their interpersonal skills.
Provide industry experts a simple way to interact with students instead of visiting their colleges.
Provide industry experts to talk to a greater audience and use this greater audience in useful ways.
Community features that will get students with like thoughts together.

5. Peepaal Barcamps

Peepaal Barcamps are an innovative process model to guide the students in the entire life cycle of their project. Peepaal aims to be as close to students as possible in this regard. Peepaal engages face to face with the students during the course of their project through various Project BarCamps and campus events.

We have already conducted a number of BarCamps in the first season where we addresses close to 1000 students across various colleges across Pune. Starting January we will conduct an additional 18 Barcamps across 10 colleges in Pune where expect to work with close to 1500 students on their projects.

Some of the colleges that we are currently work with include Symbiosis, Nowrosjee Wadia, PICT, MIT, VIT, Fergusson, Modern, SP College.

6. Peepaal Linked-in community

Peepaal has setup a linked in community. This is the place where the industry experts, students and faculty will get together for discussions and debates. These discussions will give Peepaal great insights into the initiative and further improving the initiative.

http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/1454357/1D32262ADD49

7. Get Involved !!!

All of us are aware that our educational system needs a lot of support if we want to sow the seeds for transformation in society for the future. The source for innovation and execution lie in our future students and it is all of us as experienced professionals who are best suited to provide this support. All it would take is a few hours of your time online or offline to make this impact. You can join us in our discussions online, on the portal, in the linked in community or join us for the Barcamps.

The number of Industry professionals have grown rapidly since we have started and we have close to 50 Industry professionals registered for the initiative and over 800 students impacted by the program. We do however need a lot more industry participation to ensure we have significantly broader impact across a larger number of students. If you are an Industry Professional, Faculty or a student and if all of this makes sense to you and you would like to join us on this initiative drop us a line at peepaalcampus@gmail.com and we would be happy to meet up with you to get started.

What to expect – Industry Professionals

An industry professional who wants to get involved with Peepaal should expect to:

Conduct Mock Interviews
Discuss and Refine Project Ideas
Mentor Projects Online
Own Technical Focus Areas
Drive Technology Trends
Support Campus Contact Programs
Collaborate with your campus
Discuss and Collaborate with Peers online

All you need is 2 hours a week

What to expact – Students

A student who gets involved in Peepaal can expect the following help:

Prepare for Placements
Identify, Plan and Execute Projects
Identify Technical and Soft Skill Needs
Showcase Competencies
Understand Technology Trends
Plan and execute Barcamps
Collaborate with Industry Experts
Discuss and Collaborate with Peers online

All you need is a few hours a week.

Tweet for Pune

January 4, 2009Featured, Pune Citycommunity, government, pmc, Pune City, webNavin Kabra

: Image via CrunchBase

In Barcamp Pune 5, I gave a presentation on why you should be on twitter. I also asked Ranjit Gadgil and Anupam Saraph to give a presentation on the Pune Governance wiki that they have been nurturing for the last 6 months. As a result of these presentations, various twitter related initiatives are getting started with respect to e-governance in Pune. Pravin Nirmal implemented a system where every ward page on the Pune Governance wiki shows the latest tweets related to that ward. (See for example, the bottom of the Aundh Ward page.) Pune Mirror also has a story on other such initiatives.

Last week, Anupam Saraph wrote this post on how everybody should “tweet for Pune”. We are reproducing it here:

Imagine you could SMS to everyone. Imagine you could let everyone know there is a traffic jam at the University circle. Imagine you could send out an invite to the tree-planting drive on the Baner Hill. Imagine you could message the world that admissions open for the educational course you have been waiting for. Imagine you message out reports of malaria in your neighborhood or choose to report births, deaths, suspicious activities, new shops, sale offers, rentals….

Imagine as a government agency you message out water closures. Imagine you message out flood alerts, road closures or diversions, bus, train and air departures or arrivals, waste collection notices, new project announcements, vip visits, dates of elections, urls of actionable sites…

That’s like a twitter of birds- hundreds of messages all at once…No wonder that these public messages sent on the internet are called tweets.

Of course you do not want to have thousands of tweets clogging up your life and that’s why tweeters like @pravinnirmal are enabling location specific tweets on pages at the governance wiki. See the tweets at the bottom of this page on the governance wiki. Give it a try. This way you can see the tweets sent by anyone on a location on a page devoted to that location. You can even go edit that page and add your two-cents worth.

You can also signup on tweeter and choose to follow tweeters like myself, Barack Obama or anyone else! By following a tweeter you can see all the tweets the person sends out. Others interested in your tweets may choose to follow you too.

With the White House tweets, the US senate floor tweets, the US house floor and even the US Supreme Courts on twitter tweeting away, should the rest of the world be behind?

Cities in the US have begun tweeting. Look at: San Marcos, Texas, Greensborocity, North Carolina, Killeen, Texas, Round Rock, Texas, McAllen, Texas, Plano, Texas. The Police in Austin, Texas, are using tweets for law and order advisories, notices and quick reassurances.

Can we have our ward officers, the Pune Police, the Pune RTO, the Pune Collector, the PMC, the PCMC, the Cantonment Boards, the MIDC, the PWD, the telecom companies in Pune, the Income Tax commissionerate, the Service tax commissionerate, the Pune University and even the businesses in Pune tweet?

All this is simple and free. Just sign into Twitter and start listening to the whole world- or talking too! Well not exactly the whole world, but to the whole world signed into twitter. If you are a government agency or a business in Pune you may qualify for some help and customization to get your tweets increasing your impact and effectiveness. Just email cio.pune@gmail.com to request your office to show the way to the rest of India.

About the Author – Anupam Saraph

Anupam Saraph is the CIO of Pune City. What that basically means is that

In January 2008, Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) and Software Exporter’s Association of Pune (SEAP) announced the appointment of Dr. Anupam Saraph as the “CIO of Pune”. Dr. Saraph’s appointment has been made with the objective of providing expert guidance to various e-governance initiatives that are underway in Pune, to build a vision for Pune to transform into one of the most technologically advanced cities of the future.

Dr. Saraph has a Ph.D. in Informatics from the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen University in Netherlands, and is a co-founder of a think-tank and a management consultancy. You can follow him on twitter, his blog, and soon on the under-construction site ciopune.in.

Network Security Workshop by “Null” – Dec 21

December 20, 2008Eventscommunity, hacking, network, security, user groups, wi-fi, wirelessNavin Kabra

What: Workshop on Network Security by security awareness group “Null”
When: Sunday, 21^st December, 10am to 1:30pm
Where: I²IT, Hinjewadi
Registration and Fees: This event is free for all. No registration required.

Details:

Null, a Network Security
group, is organizing an event on the 21^st of December, 2008 at
International Institute of Information Technology, Hinjewadi, Pune.

The seminars which would be held are as below:

Time	Workshops	Speaker
10 AM – 10:30 AM	Introduction to Null and Network Security	Mr. Aseem Jakhar
10:30 AM – 11:30 PM	Wireless Security	Mr. Rohit
11:30 PM – 12:30 PM	Application Security	Mr. Ajit Hatti
12:30 PM – 1:30 PM	TCP/IP and NMAP	Mr. Murtuja

Null is a Network Security community for ethical hackers, security
professionals and security enthusiasts, born out of the need for a centralized
knowledge base in security and the fact that security is treated as an add-on
and ignored many a times. It is a step to move towards immunity from security.

Apart from having fun, we also:

– Share security related knowledge

– Create a disclosure platform

– Design/Develop innovative ideas to combat current threats

– Define a “Must-Have” security knowledge-base for different roles (programmers, QA, admin, end user)

– Spread security awareness

– Organize Meetings/Conferences/Training

For further information:

– Contact: Mr. Aseem Jakhar ( giimale@gmail.com )

– Visit the website: http://null.co.in

Speakers

1. Aseem Jakhar (Founder: NULL security community)
A network security and open source enthusiast (and a system programmer
for living). He has contributed to the development of various security products
and networking/security modules including:

– Firewall
– Regex filters.
– Baysian filters.
– Heuristic filters.
– Genetic Algorithm based score generator for heuristic filters.
– Advanced attachment filters.
– Multicast packet-reflection daemon.
– SMTP engine.
– DNSBL engine.

Aseem is an active speaker at security/open source conferences like Blackhat
Europe 2008, ClubHack 2008, Gnunify 2007. He was also invited to speak at
Inbox/Outbox UK 2008. He is a C|EH from Ec-Council and is actively involved in security research. He has also given security advisories
to various organizations including banks.

2. Murtuja Bharmal (Co-founder – NULL)
Murtuja is a Linux Kernel and Network Security
maniac. Earning livelihood by working as a System Programmer. He has been
contributing in development of various Network Security
products like Firewall, VPN, Application Proxies, and Authentication
Modules for the past 5 years. Murtuja is a C|EH from EC-Council, is
actively involved in Security practices, development, consultancy, with
prestigious organizations. He has single handedly developed firewall product
and got it compliant with ICSA-Labs and also has expertise in
customization, security patching and integration of open
source products like SQUID, IPTables,
VRRP, and OpenSwan.

3. Rohit Srivastwa (Member – NULL)
Founder of ClubHack, has several years experience in providing consultancy and
training in the fields of Information security, Cyber Crime Investigation and Penetration Testing. He
is actively involved advising and teaching several military agencies, law enforcement
personnel, Corporates and Government bodies in these fields

4. Ajit Hatti (Member – NULL)

Ajit Hatti is a “Software Architect &

System Programmer” by profession and “Network Security, Linux Enthusiast”. From last 4 years he has been
contributing in research & development of security products like
IPS/UTM/Mail Security & Network Scanners with various renowned
Organizations. Ajit is also actively contributing in vulnerability research of
various protocol implementations and has been researching on modern techniques
of Fingerprinting & Application/OS detection. Ajit is also associated with
PLUG, CSI, and Ubuntu’s development and testing.

OpenSocial Developers Conference in Pune – 20th Dec

December 17, 2008Eventscommunity, conference, odgpune, open social, Technology, user groupsNavin Kabra

What: A conference for all OpenSocial Developers
When: 20th December 9:30am to 6:30pm
Where: Tower C, Panchshil Tech Park, Yerwada Pune – 411006 View Map
Registration and Fees: This is a free conference, but attendance is by invitation only. If you register now, you might still get an invitation.

Details:

A group of OpenSocial enthusiasts from Pune have come together to create this conference. The event is aimed to unite all the OpenSocial Application Developers from all over the country and just share/code/have fun and maybe inspire others to take up OpenSocial Development.

This event will also help towards awareness of OpenSocial and building a strong OpenSocial developers community.

Who should attend?

Anyone who developed any application based on OpenSocial platform or anyone who want to learn how to create OpenSocial Applications.

What’s the menu?

There are two tracks of speakers going on at two different halls. See the detailed schedule for more information. Another section is dedicated to codelab. A few developers will develop an application for the “India I Care” NGO. If you want to participate, just the organizers know on the Developer Garage Mailing list. At the end there will be an “Application show case” where OpenSocial application owners can demo their application.

Blogging and Twittering

Follow @devgarage on twitter for official Developer Garage updates. In general, people blogging or tweeting about this event are expected to use the odgpune tag, which means that searching for this term will give you everything you wanted to know about this event. (And please use that term in your own blogs or tweets.)

DOs and DONTs for startups from a 4-time entrepreneur – 20 Dec

December 16, 2008External Visitorscommunity, entrepreneurs, POCC, user groups, visitors, wisdomNavin Kabra

Pune’s Universities have given the world some of its best minds, and we are fortunate that they take time out of their busy schedules to visit Pune. And when that happens, we must grab that opportunity to learn from their experiences. One such distinguished alumnus of Pune is Nickhil Jakatdar, successful serial entrepreneur. Nickhil has successfully sold 3 startups, and is now on to his 4th one. The Pune OpenCoffee Club has arranged for a talk by Nickhil at 5:30pm on Saturday, 20th December, at SICSR, Model Colony. He will talk about the DOs and DONTs for startups, with anecdotes supporting each one of them based on his vast experience.

Chetan Pungaliya, co-founder of Kaboodle, (and himself a successful entrepreneur), says this about Nickhil:

Nickhil is a great guy to listen to. He is an advisor and friend to startups in the US and India. I personally find Nickhil’s experiences insightful and it is always a pleasure talking to him. He has done talks like these in Berkeley, Stanford, Symbiosis and COEP in the past and people love it. Even though this is last minute, you should definitely try to attend the talk.

Here are some highlights of Nickhil’s background:

Nickhil is currently the CEO and Co-founder of mobile video search and delivery startup Vuclip. For details, see TechCrunch Mobile’s interview with Nickhil.
Earlier, Nickhil was the President and COO of Praesagus, a MIT incubated start-up that he helped grow to becoming the most widely used design-to-manufacturing modeling software in its class, before its acquisition by Cadence Design Systems. Post-acquisition, Nickhil became Engineering Group Director at Cadence where he ran the entire Manufacturing Modeling Group.
Nickhil helped found and served on the board of directors of CommandCAD, an electrical CAD company that was acquired two years after its founding.
Nickhil co-founded Timbre Technologies, a semiconductor manufacturing start-up, that won the first-ever Berkeley Business Plan competition, leading to a successful venture-backed financing. Nickhil served as CTO and VP of Marketing and Products as the company grew to become the industry standard in the field of scatterometry, before being acquired by Tokyo Electron Ltd. Nickhil remained at TEL for 3 years as Sr. Director of Technology and Marketing.
Nickhil has an M.S. and Ph.D. from UC Berkeley and has been the recipient of many awards from various organizations, including the IEEE Best Paper Award in the area of Transactions in Semiconductor Manufacturing for 2001, the Berkeley Distinguished Pioneer Award, the NSF and MICRO fellowships.
Nickhil is a student of COEP, and had won the Most Outstanding Student award when he graduated.
Nickhil has been featured in several articles published in the United States and in India.
Nickhil has to his credit more than 30 patents and 20 conference papers.
Vuclip was earlier known as blueapple.mobi – and that was a bad business decision, and they ended up having to change their name to vuclip.com. Can you guess why?
Vuclip went from a few thousand users to over a million users in just a few months, without any advertising. How?

Details:
What: Presentation by Nickhil Jakatdar, “DOs and DONTs for Startups”
When: 5:30pm, Saturday 20th December
Where: 7th follor, Symbiosis Institute of Computer Studies and Research, Atur Chambers, Model Colony, Pune. Map.
Registration and Fees: This event is free for all. No registration required.

Please forward this to anybody who might be interested in one day starting their own startup.

Be informed of such distinguished visitors and other tech events in Pune by subscribing for our PuneTech updates via RSS, Email, twitter, or SMS.

POCC Meeting Report – SEO, Web Scalability and Olio

December 16, 2008Eventscommunity, POCC, scalability, SEO, user groups, webNavin Kabra

Dhananjay Nene wrote this detailed report on the Pune OpenCoffee Club meeting last Saturday, which covered Search Engine Optimization by Dimakh Sahasrabuddhe, and Web Scalability by Hashamkha Pathan of SUN. We have reproduced it here with his permission for the benefit of PuneTech readers.

Went to the Pune OpenCoffee Club meet yesterday. It was supposed to focus on Search Engine Optimisation, Web Scalability and Sun Startup Essentials Program.

Search Engine Optimisation – Dimakh Sahasrabuddhe, Dimakh Consultants

I really liked this session. It is always refreshing to see a very down to earth speaker explain things broken down in a very simple way (tinge of jealousy at my end ?). While I feel like a ??? ????? (half doctor or amatuer) on this topic since I know only parts of it, I came back with some more insights into the space and some comfort in knowledge that the little I knew wasn’t way off the mark.

Anyways, here’s what Dimakh had to say on the topic :

Make sure you know what keywords you are conducting the SEO. Don’t forget the site name itself in the process. For good SEO, focus on the following issues (listed in a descending priority as per Dimakh, he said Google hasn’t ever published the priorities)

Content : It is important to make sure your content is in tune with the desired topics and keywords. Make sure the keywords (and sometimes even the phrases) you want to optimise for are covered in the content. Google does look at the keyword density in the content and that can influence your site rankings.
Domain : It is preferable to have the important word or two about your site in the domain itself. eg. You may consider having a site domain as sushrut-icecream-parlour.com instead of sushrut.com (I am not sure if he would’ve preferred the hyphens there – just applying my own thoughts here).
Filename : Make sure your filenames (ie. those in the URL) actually reflect the content.
Tags : Ensure that the tags (meta?) reflect the content appropriately
Alt Tags : Use the alt tags to enrich the information available to the search engine to better understand the images or hyperlinks. Keep them short but give enough info to the search engine eg. in a link to a file called enquiry.html, have the alt tag mention “Enquiry for Motors”.
Internal Links : Make sure it is easy for the spider to traverse through your site using the various links. Sometimes you may want to provide an alternative navigation mechanism if the default mechanism is not easily understood by a search engine (I assume he was referring to things like a Flash based navigation)
External Links : I really couldn’t understand what he implied here (probably because I got a little lost into thinking when I should’ve been listening), but some could help fill out the stuff in the comments below.

Finally Dimakh mentioned Seo Root and Google Rankings as sites to visit for further learnings. On the whole a very helpful session. One more karma point Pune Open Coffee Club earned in my books.

Web Scalability by Sun Microsystems :

(I missed the first couple of mins, hence didn’t catch the presenter names). (The presenter was Hashamkha Pathan from Sun. -Navin) The presentation focused on a toolkit designed for prototyping various technical and architectural issues around web 2.0 applications called Olio. Its a very nice and capable tool which in the words of the web site can be used for the following activities :

Understand how to use various web2.0 technologies such as AJAX, memcached, mogileFS etc. in the creation of your own application. Use the code in the application to understand the subtle complexities involved and how to get around issues with these technologies.
Evaluate the differences in the three implementations: php, ruby and java to understand which might best work for your situation.
Within each implementation, evaluate different infrastructure technologies by changing the servers used (e.g: apache vs lighttpd, mysql vs postgre, ruby vs Jruby etc.)
Drive load against the application to evaluate the performance and scalability of the chosen platform.
Experiment with different algorithms (e.g. memcache locking, a different DB access API) by replacing portions of code in the application.

An excellent piece of content that was poorly targeted imho. Sun has an extended amount of experience dealing with enterprise architects, and this was a really wonderful presentation which most enterprise architects would’ve understood easily. This particular community of people often need to do their homework very well, and usually are allowed a fair amount of time and money to do their homework, and in many cases also have access to a body of people who are also equally capable in working out various issues related to architecture.

I really think this is a useful tool which can be used by startups but that they shall need to spend the time to understand the tool and what it could do for them. However it is not a point and shoot kind of a tool. Based on the questions I could very easily understand that most persons very quickly ended up assuming that the tool could do much more than what the tool authors ever intended, and then felt disappointed. This was really a situation of positioning gone awry and I think Sun will need some more effort in positioning the presentation in its early stages to prevent disappointment later.

Finally as in a question I did ask quite explicitly, the reason why it makes sense for Sun to invest in and open source such a tool, is that this tool really forces you to do your homework well in the first place. If you were to do your homework well in the first place and focus on performance and scalability early on, the tool usage would tell you to either focus on Java or more infrastructure to handle high load or low read percentage scenarios. These are very reasonable and sensible outputs of the tool. What olio does not tell you is the set of tradeoffs which are outside its scope, impact of the various choices of languages and toolkits on spead of release, agility, robustness and maintainability – that is something that the startup architect will need to come to some decision independently.

Finally sun talked about its Startup Essentials Program which offered various promotional incentives to startups. Very useful incentives, though I would advise people to evaluate if usage of such incentives introduces a small degree of lockin onto open solaris (I like opensolaris – just would ensure that I would use it in a manner that doesn’t introduce too much lock in), and also the post production cost implications including support. There were a fair degree of questions through the session, and I think as an audience it makes sense to pause and take the matter offline if the proceedings continue to be stuck at a stage after two or three questions.

Update: A presentation similar to the one presented can be found on Olio site at Olio Presentation

In parting

All in all a very useful session, and a left me with the desire to attend more sessions subsequently. Thanks POCC and all the organisers.

About the Author – Dhananjay Nene

Dhananjay is a Pune-based software Engineer with 17 years in the field. Passionate about software engineering, programming, design and architecture. For more info, check out his PuneTech wiki profile. He blogs about software engineering and programming languages at /var/log/mind, and other more general topics at /home/dhananjay.

Techstart.in: Nurturing the passion of our engineering students

December 15, 2008Featured, Websitescommunity, education, Technology, user groupsNavin Kabra

This week on PuneTech, we are going to feature a bunch of initiatives started by people who are passionate about helping students in our engineering colleges (actually anybody interested in technology, student or not, engineering or not) to be more, achieve more, learn more, all with the help of mentors from industry who would like to see all these talented students reach their true potential. Watch this space over the next few days for more such initiatives or better yet, subscribe for updates via RSS, Email, or twitter. Today, we are featuring, Techstart.in. (Update: the next post in this series is about KQInfoTech’s industry-supported “free” PG Diploma in Systems Programming.)

Techstart.in is a group that aims to create special interest technology clubs of students, with each club mentored by one or more people from from industry who have experience in that area, and are willing to spend time with the students to guide them. The club will have loosely structured activites, projects to complete, possibly presentations and discussions, all planned and guided by the mentors.

The club was started by Freeman Murray and has since been joined by a number of mentors – but there is no such thing as too many mentors. So, you should seriously consider signing up. The only qualifications you need are that you should be passionate about this, and you should have a little industry experience.

Freeman explains techstart.in thus:

The basic idea is to find people with practical industry experience willing to spend some time each month creating or identifying useful exercises people interested in their field could do to develop their skills and posting them on a blog or mailing list. Additionally they spend time each week facilitating a discussion of the participants on a mailing list.

The intention is not to compete with existing online resources for technical training and support, but to provide some more human support and mentorship for people on the path. Mentors can and should encourage participants to engage in the existing online communities surrounding their technologies. Their guidance as to what communities to engage, and how to engage could still be invaluable.

In this way, over time people can develop significant skills in fields where they don’t have formal training while they continue their studies or working full time.

We all crib about the quality of technical education, but with the Internet we have the opportunity to do something about it. We can help eager young and the motivated who want to get into high-tech but are over whelmed at the amount of information available on the internet, or get blocked because of elementary problems.

It shouldn’t take much time, for mentors just a couple hours a month to research the monthly activities and post links to learning resources participants should look into, and then a couple hours each week responding to questions and facilitating discussion on the mailing list. For participants, activities should take 5 – 10 hours of effort each month, plus some additional time sharing with the community thru the blog and the mailing lists.

If there’s a field you are passionate about and feel more people should get into, please think about setting up a small club for it on the techstart wiki. If you see a club where people are exploring a technology you’ve been curious, by all means join the community.

The initial clubs we have are in blogging, advanced java and open source technology. Amit is also mentoring a group to write some automatic deployment scripts in php.

Find out more on the wiki – http://techstart.in

How to participte – Students

To participate in one of the techstart clubs simply visit the clubs website, or join the their mailing list. Make sure to introduce yourself to the community when you join, and read over any introductory material the mentor put up on the website or in the group.

How to participate – Mentors

Start your own club or make yourself available for mentoring people on a project – simply create a mailing list for it on Google Groups or any other public mailing list site, and add a description of it and yourself to this wiki. At least every month post exercises to the list which participants can do to strengthen their skills, and spend some time every week monitoring the list, encouraging discussion, and helping people with problems. That’s it !

Contact [mailto://freemanATpobox.com|Freeman] to get the wiki key. If you’d like to join the discussion about how to make TechStart better please join the TechStart Google Group

Clubs already formed

Title: Bloggers Club

Mentors: Freeman Murray Tarun Chandel

Description:

This track is for people interested in writing on the internet. All participants will set up and customize their blog initially, and then every two weeks participants are encouraged to share their next post with the group. The group will give feedback on the writers style, grammer and ideas. Members are additionally encouraged to comment on eachother’s blogs and do cross linking. Occasionally exersizes relating to google analytics and SEO will be given to the club members. Twitter, Videoblogging , Google Analytics, SEO, RSS and feedreaders will also be discussed in time.

Mailing List: groups.google.com/group/bloggers-club

Title: Java Insights 101

Mentor: Parag Shah

Description:

This learning track is for developers who have completed at least one course in Core Java (or are familiar with basic principles of Java, like syntax, compiling, and running Java programs) and would like to improve their understanding of the Java language and ecosystem.

URL: adaptivelearningsolutions.blogspot.com/2008/11/javainsights-101.html

Mailing List: groups.google.com/group/adaptive-learning

Title: Open Source Technology

Mentor: Tarun Dua

Description:

This is a track for technologists who want to build upon their understanding of the free and open ecosystem being provided by the Open Source and relatively open and portable datasets. Do you dig a well everytime you want to drink water, then why do you insist on hacking a new solution when another more efficient solution already exists as Open Source. Leverage what already exists in the ecosystem instead of re-inventing the wheel.

URL: linux-delhi.com

Mailing List:groups.google.com/group/linux-delhi-techstart

Title: Auomatic Deplyoment Script

Mentor: Amit Singh

Description:

Ami of this project is to automate the process of deploying websites written in PHP. A very basic script exists at my blog, we will be enhancing it by putting continuous integration, database migration etc.

URL:http://sourceforge.net/projects/adscript

Mailing List: http://groups.google.co.in/group/adscript

Mentors already signed up

Name	Affiliation	Skills & Interests
Freeman Murray	upStart	Software development training, startup culture, internet video, internet advocacy
Subhransu Behera	EnTrip	Ruby on Rails, Web Application Development, Linux System Programming, Fedora Packaging
Parag Shah	Adaptive Software Solutions	Software development, Software development training, New media technologies
Tarun Dua	E2ENetworks	Efficient technology operations is the key to effective delivery of technology where it matters most.
Amit Singh	Pune It Labs Pvt. Ltd.	Web Application Development

POCC Meeting: SEO; web scalability; SUN startup essentials, 13 Dec

December 9, 2008Eventscommunity, entrepreneurs, Events, POCC, SEO, startups, user groups, webNavin Kabra

What: Pune OpenCoffee Club get-together with a 3-point agenda. 1. Search Engine Optimization, 2. Web scalability, 3. SUN startup essentials program

When: Saturday, 13th December, 4pm – 7pm

Where: SICSR, Model Colony. Here is the map.

Registration and Fees: This event is free for everyone – no registration required

Details:

4pm – 5pm: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – Dimakh Sahasrabuddhe, Dimakh Consultants

In the last POCC meeting (Pain Points of Pune Startups), people wanted to know how to do SEO for their websites, and the consensus that emerged was that you should either do SEO yourself, or at least have a good understanding of SEO before you outsource it to a consultant. As to who would be a good consultant for SEO, someone suggested that we should simply do a google search on “SEO Pune” – whoever claims to be good in this area should be the first hit. We tried that and the first Pune company that showed up was Dimakh Consultants. We’ve invited CEO Dimakh Sahasrabuddhe to give members an overview of SEO.

Dimakh Consultants is a Pune-based web consulting company with a decade long specialization in web designing, application development, hosting, networking, SEO & SEM. To date, Dimakh has managed the set-up and delivery of 5 Internet Service providers all over India. He manages more than 20 servers placed all over the world and hosts more than 1600 websites in India, US, Europe and far east. He regularly conducts workshops on SEO and SEM around the country.

5pm – 6pm: Overview of Web scalability by Sun Microsystems; and overview of Sun’s Startup Essentials Program

Representatives from Sun Microsystems will give a presentation on scalability of websites – something they are in a unique position to understand since Sun’s servers and Sun’s MySQL database form the key elements of the stack for some of the biggest websites in the world. Specifically, they’ll talk about: Web Application & Performance Considerations, Web2.0 toolkit – An overview, Sun Systems for Web Applications, Getting Best out of MySQL on Solaris.

After that, Sun will give an overview of their Startup Essentials program. This is a program designed by Sun for startups. Get industry-leading servers starting under $750. Storage up to 70% off, installed and configured under 5 minutes. Access to their network of investors. Your choice of OS (Solaris, Linux or Windows). Open Source and discounted enterprise-class software. Free technical advice and training, discounted partner hosting, and discounted storage. Anyone can apply, and you get access to all the above if you are selected.

6pm – 7pm: General Networking

Mingle. Ask follow up questions to Dimakh, or the Sun folks. Try to recruit trespassers. Brag about your startup’s achievements. Ask people if they know any angel investors. Show people how to open a beer bottle in 10 different ways. Live-twitter all the exciting developments as the meeting progresses. Play housie. (Actually that is not part of the plan, but if SocialWebFactory shows up, who knows what will happen.) Maybe even watch a movie.

Message to Pune Startups

Nominate yourself for proto.in. See Santosh’s blog post to know why you should do this, and how it will help you.

Message to Everyone

This weekend is going to be a rather active weekend (again) for tech activities. Check the PuneTech calendar for details.

Problems faced by Pune startups, and suggested solutions

December 6, 2008Eventscommunity, entrepreneurship, POCC, startups, user groupsNavin Kabra

Together, we can solve our problems faster than alone

The Pune OpenCoffee Club (POCC) had a meeting a few weeks ago to discuss the various pain points faced by Pune Startups, and to see what solutions or workarounds people had come up with. POCC member Mandar Vaze has captured the main points of the discussion for the benefit of those who were unable to attend. In places where my notes had additional info that’s missing from Mandar’s notes, I have taken the liberty of interspersing my points – those are in italics.

I joined the meeting slighly late. When I arrived there were about 50+ people seating in a circle, and few more people occupying seats on the sofa behind. Topic planned for the meeting was “Startups – pain points”.

Initial round of introductions

Internet connectivity :

BSNL seems to be the best in terms of stability
BSNL’s Business plans for internet not cost effective
Several startups use multiple Home connection plans – Is it legal to do this?
Someone mentioned that for the team of 15, 40GB/month plan is sufficient
(Another suggestion was to take a limited bandwidth BSNL connection in the office, and then do heavy downloads at home using your personal unlimited bandwidth connection.
If you are using multiple connections (possibly from different ISPs) to ensure stability, then free, open source software is available that can seamlessly allow you to multiplex between these two connections. -navin)

Dealing with Power cuts :

Laptops work best to avoid worrying about power cuts.
If you need to use Desktop, LCD better than CRT (low power usage -less load on UPS/inverter)
With laptops, team can work from home, in case extended power cuts
- Assuming team mates stay in different area than office
- When team grows, this may not scale – possible security issues
Suggest using 9-cell battery
Have common pool of spare charged batteries around to extend the battery life even further
Spare batteries cost around Rs. 3000 as against UPS for Rs. 5000
UPS/Inverter :
- Anjali (I think) mentioned that 4.8 KVA inverter costs about Rs 48000
- She also suggested that multiple smaller UPS better than single bigger one of higher capacity – avoid single point of failure.
- Someone asked to post reliable vendor for UPS/Inverter

Incubation Space :

IT Park / Incubation centers were suggested as a solution where you don’t need to deal with any of these hassles. They take care of power, internet, and other facilities issues that you don’t want to worry about. Pune IT Park and Connaught Place were the two possibilities suggested. This entire section written by Navin with inputs from Amit since after actually visiting Pune IT Park and Connaught Place and clarifying many of the misconceptions people at the POCC meeting had about these places
At Pune IT Park the cost in the region of approximately 5500 per month, per person – and this includes the internet connection. (Someone at the meeting had indicated a cost of 8000 – which is incorrect.)
Facilities include shared reception, printer and fax machines, gym, swimming pool, 24×7 security, shared parking, internet connection for smaller (e.g. 4-person setup), free coffee/tea, (paid) cafeteria.
Someone mentioned that you can stay there for only 2 years after which you have to leave. This is not true.
Capacity of up to 20 seats is available currently (Someone mentioned that there is a long waiting list – that appears to be no longer true.)
Connaught place near Bund Garden has offices for rent – but their rates suggest that they are not targeting startups, but are probably geared towards senior executives of MNCs. Our rough calculations indicated that the cost would be in excess of 30,000 per month for two people.
Another possibility suggested by a few people was to convince some friend of yours who owns a company to give you a couple of seats to work on your startup. We’ve heard of a number of people going this route.

How to share experiences?

Several people seem to get stuck at same issues – How can we address this?
Wiki doesn’t work
(For many startup issues, especially those related to partnership / proprietorship / private limited, registrations, and other legal issues, Vikas Kumar, CTO of BrainVisa pointed out that he knows many of the answers, based on his own experiences, but doesn’t have the time to put the information on a wiki, or even to respond to questions on a mailing list. However, if someone were to call him up on the phone, he would be happy to help them out. -navin)
“Ask Pune Tech” was started as one possible solution for this problem.

Student internships

People wanted to know whether it is possible to successfully use students from local colleges to do useful work for the startup, either as part of a paid internship or as part of their final year project.
Many people have had bad experiences. Some had good experiences too. People had good experiences with the following colleges: COEP, PICT, MIT, SICSR.
Sahil, who is a student at SICSR, suggested that we should use the SICSR R&D cell, which has enthusiastic students who would be happy to work on such stuff. Just drop into SICSR and visit the R&D cell.

About the Author – Mandar Vaze

Mandar Vaze is Linux Enthusiast since 1997, using linux at home on and off. He was associated with Twin Cities LUG in US, and PLUG after returning back to India. After working in corporate environment for 13 years, he has recently quit his job at Avaya. He plans to have his own business some day, but currently looking to be associated with some Pune based start-up as a consultant. He thinks Pune Tech is cool 🙂

CSI Pune Workshop: Introduction to Agile/SCRUM – Saturday 6th December

December 3, 2008Eventsagile, community, csi, Events, scrumNavin Kabra

What: CSI Pune’s introductory workshop on Agile/SCRUM
When: Saturday, December 6th, 2008, 3:00pm to 6:-0pm
Where: BMC Software, S.B. Road, 5th Floor Tower A, ICC Tech Park, Senapati Bapat Road, Pune, Maharashtra 411016
Entry: Free for CSI Members, Rs. 100 for others, Rs. 50 for BMC employees. Register here.

Details – What is SCRUM?

What exactly is Agile – and which Agile? What is Scrum? The growing evidence base that Agile project methods deliver value faster and with higher quality is all well and good. However, if you and/or your organisation have little or no Agile experience – deciding where to start can be quite daunting.

Scrum is the fastest growing Agile methods which is increasingly being used by IT and non-IT organizations worldwide. Introduced to the world in 1996, Scrum has become the foremost Agile methodology for IT giants like Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Verizon etc.

Benefits of the workshop provides participants with a top-level overview of Scrum and a balanced appreciation of the different Agile methodologies.

Delegates will take away with them a clear understanding of whether Scrum is ‘right’ for their organization, its pros and cons and those of the different methodologies.

Participants will have ample opportunity to ask questions and interact with the presenters in order to relate Scrum to their own organizations. They will also be provided with onward knowledge and learning resource sources.

Who Should Attend

Business managers
Program Managers
Project Managers
Software Development Managers
Software managers
Software Quality Managers
Developers and Testers

Programme

15 minutes: Registration

30 minutes: Introduction : How did Agile arise? What is Agile? Where is Agile Now? The Emergence of Scrum

45 minutes: SCRUM Breeze-through

15 minutes: Tea Break

30 minutes: Comparison and Summary of Leading methods with Scrum

SCRUM Comparative Strengths
XP Comparative Strengths
DSDM Comparative Strengths
The common aspects

30 minutes: Panel Discussion / Q & A

Selection of context?
Do different contexts favour different methods?

There are a lot of other tech activities going on in Pune in the next few weeks. Check out the PuneTech calendar for details.

1. Introduction – Bringing Industry and Academics Together

2. Do our talented students need improvement? Can it be done?

3. Objectives of Peepaal

4. Peepaal Online Portal

5. Peepaal Barcamps

6. Peepaal Linked-in community

7. Get Involved !!!

What to expect – Industry Professionals

What to expact – Students

Related links:

About the Author – Anupam Saraph

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Blogging and Twittering

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About the Author – Dhananjay Nene

How to participte – Students

How to participate – Mentors

Clubs already formed

Title: Bloggers Club

Title: Java Insights 101

Title: Open Source Technology

Title: Auomatic Deplyoment Script

Mentors already signed up

Details:

4pm – 5pm: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – Dimakh Sahasrabuddhe, Dimakh Consultants

5pm – 6pm: Overview of Web scalability by Sun Microsystems; and overview of Sun’s Startup Essentials Program

6pm – 7pm: General Networking

Message to Pune Startups

Message to Everyone

About the Author – Mandar Vaze

Details – What is SCRUM?

Who Should Attend

Programme