Tag Archives: community

What to expect at Barcamp Pune

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Update: Our hearts go out to the people of Mumbai, but our bodies continue their day-to-day activities in Pune. Barcamp Pune 5 will happen. It starts at 10am, at SICSR (Symbiosis Institute of Computer Studies and Research), Model Colony, Atur Centre, Opp. Om Super Market, Pune (map).

Barcamp Pune 5 is this Saturday (29th November) and I am hoping that this time, a lot of people who are not familiar with the concept of barcamp will show up. Earlier, we wrote about what is barcamp, and why you should attend. For those still sitting on the fence, wondering whether to attend, let me try and give an idea of what to expect at BCP5.

The barcamp page shows 250+ registrations. So expect at least 150 people or more to show up.

Expect chaos. I mean that in a good way. Conferences are thoughtfully organized by committees of experts to include topics that you should know about. Barcamp is not a conference – it’s an unconference. No suits, no committees. What you will get is talks on topics that you want to know about.

Expect a tweet-up. At 5:30pm. A meeting of people who use and love twitter. If you are not a twitter-user yet, you should be. Attend the tweet-up to find out why.

Expect talks from a set of very wide-ranging topics (mostly tech): how to secure your home wireless network from hackers, PHP, how to build iPhone applications, the semantic web, using maps in your applications and websites, robotics, bootstrapping your startup. And many more. It’s an unconference, so can’t know in advance all the different presentations that will ultimately happen. And some of the presentations will actually happen with 4 people huddled around a laptop in a corner on the floor.

Expect enthusiasm. Expect to see lots of energy. People passionate about technology. Blogging. Web-2.0.

Expect to see people not just from Pune, but also Mumbai, Bangalore, Aurangabad, Hyderabad and other cities. Yes, barcamps are worth travelling 800km for.

Expect to see students, junior techies, people with 15+ years of experience, programmers, managers, designers, NGO volunteers, open source fanatics, .NET gurus, savvy businessmen and geeks.

Expect to make new friends. You’ll meet lots of interesting people. If you are thinking of a startup, you might meet your co-founder. If you are interested in Erlang, you might meet other Erlang enthusiasts. If you are a recruiter, you might meet your latest recruits. If you are single, you might meet your future partner (hey! it happens).

Expect to go off to dinner parties with strangers.

Expect to give and receive business cards – some old school habits die hard.

Expect people to take lots of photographs and upload them to flickr. Expect blog posts about barcamp to trickle in all through the next week. Expect wi-fi. Expect live-blogging. Expect twittering.

Expect struggling startups to demonstrate their work. Some of them would have been doing this for the nth time, because they’ve been going to every barcamp in the country to get visibility for their startup. In other cases, you’ll be the first people in the world to see the new product.

Expect the unexpected.

Expect to learn. To teach. To discuss. To argue. To agree. To disagree. To clap. To laugh. To giggle. To boo (yes, that happens too.)

Expect the boring people to stay at home, and only the interesting people to show up.

Expect those who wanted to come but could not to be profoundly unhappy.

Expect those who did not attend to have missed something great.

Introducing Ask PuneTech – Ask us anything and we’ll get you the answer

In Depth,

Update: Ask PuneTech is being replaced by ForPune.com, a site that is much better suited to answer questions you might have about Pune. Please ask a question there, and we (PuneTech and the rest of the tech community in Pune) will monitor that site and try to get an answer for you. To ensure that the right people read your question, please make sure to tag your question “punetech” so that it gets read by the right people.

The rest of this page is kept for historical purposes, but we prefer that you use ForPune.com instead of the mechanisms described below.

Quick Summary for those too lazy to read the whole page: Ask PuneTech is a One-Stop Shop for all the information needed by infotech professionals and infotech startups in Pune. Ask us a question, or for a referral, or for some information and we find it for you, or we will put you in touch with person who has previous experience in that area to guide you. Just send an email to ask@punetech.com.

Details: PuneTech has been running for 8 months now, and it has been very successful in filling the information gap that existed in the tech ecosystem in Pune. The PuneTech blog reaches about 700 people on a daily basis. The PuneTech wiki is slowly adding more and more useful data (see, for example, the page on tech user groups and organizations in Pune). The PuneTech calendar has become the most comprehensive source of information about tech events in the city.

However, one of the more unexpected ways in which we are helping people is in finding answers to our readers’ questions, or connecting them to the right people. In doing this, we have realized that there is a a need of a service where people who are facing some problem need to be connected with someone who has solved that problem in the past. The internet and google are supposed to solve this problem, but it doesn’t work that way. The web is not particularly useful if you are looking for specific, local information (like, who is a good CA for STPI registration). And sometimes the problem complicated and you need to talk to a human who can guide you. We noticed that we have been doing more and more of that in recent times, and we decided to formalize the concept and announce it. Thus was born the “Ask PuneTech” service.

Through PuneTech, we now know enough experienced people in the field of infotech that for any question you might have as a techie in Pune, or an infotech startup in Pune, we can connect you to the right person who can help you. More importantly, we know enough people who would happily help others like this for free – just for the satisfaction of preventing others from going through the same pain that they went through. So send the question to ask@punetech.com and we’ll get back to you with the answer.

This is a free service, but if you ask a question, you need to promise that when you get a solution to you problem, you will write it up in an article and send it to us for publishing on the PuneTech wiki for the benefit of all the others in the future. This way, the knowledgebase will continue to grow.

The rest of this page has more details in a Q&A format to make you think that you are talking to yourself:

Q: How does it work?

A: If you are a techie in Pune, or a Pune-based info tech startup, and you have some question or difficulty send us the question at ask@punetech.com. If we already know the answer (i.e. someone has asked that question before) you’ll get the answer right away. If not, we’ll tap our network of volunteer experts, and try to get the answer for you. Or, we’ll put you in touch with a person who we believe will be able to guide you appropriately, and whose judgment we have some confidence in. We’ll provide you with of the source of the information, and our confidence in the validity of the information, and/or our confidence in the reputation of the source.

This will be a completely free service, but there is one rule you have to follow: If you find a good enough solution to your problem (and assuming that the question / answer happens to be of general interest), you must write it up and send it to us so that we can post it to the PuneTech wiki for the benefit of the rest of the world. You must promise us this as a “payment” for using our service.

Sample questions:

1. Can you suggest a good consultant / service provider for the following:

a. Accounting

b. Company registration

c. STPI registration

d. Branding / marketing

e. Design (logo, website)

f. Intellectual property (copyright, trademarks, patents)

g. Legal questions (cyber law, privacy)

h. Facilities (rental accommodation, furniture, etc.)

2. Can you suggest a good free / paid service for

a. Web hosting

b. Broadband internet

c. Website development

d. Search Engine Optimization

3. Where can I find a Ph.D. in statistics / maths / data-mining in Pune to help me with xyz

4.

Warning: Ask PuneTech is not intended to be a jobs board. Do not post about open positions you might have. Do not advertise yourself as a candidate. Such requests will be summarily deleted. Requests for persons with specific skills will be entertained only if the skills required are very specific (e.g. good: looking for help with Erlang; bad: looking for Java expert) and for a short consultation (e.g. good: need help with installing SuSE on a Dell laptop, bad: need a QA person).

Q: How much do you charge for this?

A: This is a free service. We are a group of volunteers doing this because we really want the tech ecosystem in Pune to improve, become more vital, become more active, and in general increase the productivity of Pune’s techies. We personally benefit from this indirectly: vastly improved networking, increase in visibility, increase in exposure, having a finger on the pulse of Pune, and the undying gratitude of some of the smartest people in Pune.

Q: Do you take money from services/experts whom you are recommending?

No. PuneTech and “Ask PuneTech” are community-driven, non-commercial services that do not accept any money from any source for any purpose whatsoever. Services/sources will be recommended purely on the basis of quality of service provided.

Q: Why not create a wiki for this and be done? Why is this service needed?

A: We tried and it doesn’t work. For some reason, people don’t add content to a wiki. There isn’t enough critical mass, and/or visibility for this to work. So, to tackle that problem, we are trying this, where we manually connect the “askers” to the “askees”, and “force” the “askers” to update the wiki after the question has been answered.

Q: Why not have an open mailing list where anybody can post questions and answers?

A: One problem is that there are many people who are not aware of the appropriate mailing list or website or forum where the question can be asked. In such cases, the Ask PuneTech service will simply point you towards the appropriate forum where you should ask your question. And in case, the question doesn’t get answered there, then we try to find an actual person to answer the question for you.

That brings us to the second problem: Sometimes posting to a mailing list works, but often it doesn’t. In other cases, there are many questions which do not get answers on the mailing list, in spite of the fact that the list does contain members who know the answers. It is often the case that the person who knows the answer would be happy to guide you if you called him up on the phone, but doesn’t have the time to type out the answer in email (or doesn’t read the mailing list so closely.) We are hoping to overcome this problem by introducing a personal touch.

Where possible, we will redirect you to an appropriate mailing list. e.g. if you have problems with connecting to BSNL broadband from your Ubuntu system, we’ll send you to the PLUG mailing list.

Q: How do you keep tabs on the quality / reliability of the information you provide?

A: We intend to tackle this in two ways. First, for all the suggestions you get, we’ll provide you with of the source of the information, and our confidence in the validity of the information, and/or our confidence in the reputation of the source. Hopefully this will be enough for you to take a slightly more informed decision. We feel that this will be better than having no information at all.

Second, over time, we intend to build a database of information sources and our confidence in the accuracy of their information. After we suggest something to someone, we expect them to provide us feedback as to how well it worked out. We’ll collate this information over time so that the quality of the information improves.

Q: Why are you doing this manually? Shouldn’t you use technology / wisdom of the crowds / automation to do this more efficiently?

OR

Q: Is this the same as Yahoo!Answers / LinkedIn Answers / xyz Forums / CraigsList?

A: We believe that technological / wisdom-of-the-crowds solutions only work at a large scale (like Wikipedia / Yahoo!Answers). It does not work at a smaller scale (like Pune). Otherwise, a viable technology solution would have emerged by now. The lack of that has forced us to try this out.

That said, we definitely intend to use leverage technology as much as possible in this endeavor. We just feel that initially this has to be done manually until it gathers enough of a critical mass.

Also, if you feel that a technology solution will beat this, we would encourage you to try. This is one argument we’d love to lose. We don’t care whether our approach wins or some other approach. We just want a solution to the problem of lack of reliable information.

Q: If this is free, it is not sustainable! This service will shut down after 6 months!

A: We have been doing http://punetech.com as a free service for almost an year now, and we have a pretty good feel for what is sustainable and what isn’t. In any case, we’ll worry about sustainability a little later. For now we are focusing on proving that there is a need, and people will use a service like this, and it will be useful. (We are convinced of that, but we need to prove it.) Once that has been proved, we can worry about how to sustain it.

Q: Since this is volunteer driven, it is not scalable!

A: See answer to previous question.

Q: How can I help?

A:

  1. Start using the service. The more people use it, the more useful the service becomes (and the knowledgebase grows)
  2. Make yourself available to us as an expert who can provide the answer (in whatever happens to be your area of expertise). We promise to not bother you too much. We’ll only forward you as many questions are you are willing to handle. If we don’t know you, we’ll initially put you down as an “untrusted source” and over time, your designation will (hopefully!) change to “reliable”.
  3. Tell all your friends about this service. (Actually, while you are at it, also tell your friends to subscribe to PuneTech at http://punetech.com/subscribe/ to get information about all the latest news, events, tech groups, startups and technologies in Pune.

Q: Who is behind this service?

A: The questions asked to “Ask PuneTech” are answered by a network of volunteers across Pune, who all share a passion for technology, or a passion for Pune, or, in most cases, both.

The service is coordinated by the people who run PuneTech, the most comprehensive source of information about technology in Pune (if you find a better source please let us know!) It was started by Navin Kabra. Amit Paranjape is a key advisor and evangelist for PuneTech, and one of the top volunteers. Another special mention goes to the Pune OpenCoffee Club, which has a close symbiotic relationship with PuneTech. There are a number of other people, too numerous to mention, who contribute in varying degrees.

Both, PuneTech and “Ask PuneTech” are intended to be community-driven, non-commercial services. To ensure that the content remains free from bias and vested interests, we do not accept any money from any source for any purpose whatsoever.

Upcoming conferences and tech events in Pune – Nov/Dec 2008

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IdeaCamp Pune (source: InsideSocialWeb.com)
Idea Camp Pune, 2008. Photo courtesy InsideSocialWeb.com

The next couple of months are going to rather active in Pune, with a host of really good conferences and events coming up. Some of these are free events, while others have a fee associated with them. We have written about some of them on PuneTech before, while some you’ll be hearing about for the first time. Some of them are for hardcore techies, while others are more tangential. In any case, there is something for everyone in here. Take this opportunity to improve your skills, or improve your business network.Except for power cuts, it is a great time to be a techie in Pune.

Nov 19 CSI Pune Lecture: Data Management for BI : Ashwin Deokar from SAS R&D Pune will talk about issues in data management in Business Intelligence. Free for members & students, Rs. 100 for others, Rs 50 for Persistent employees
Nov 22, 23 Code Camp: 24-hour code camp organized by Pune Linux Users Group. Free: anybody can attend.
Nov 22 Pune OpenCoffee Club Meeting – Pune Startup’s Pain Points : Get together with other startups in the Pune area and discuss solutions to common problems. Free, anybody can attend, no registration required.
Nov 25,26,27 IndicThreads Conference on Java Technologies: 3-day conference on Java; speakers from all over India. Fees range from Rs. 4000 to 8500 depending on various things.
Nov 27, 28 Conference on Advances in Usability Engineering: organized by Viswakarma Institute of Information Technology. Rs 3500 for professionals, Rs. 2000 for academics and Rs. 500 for students.
Nov 27, 28 Wi-Fi Security Training from AirTightNetworks: Airtight Networks has some of the best wi-fi security products in the world, and they have all been developed fully in Pune. Rs. 8000 before 21 Nov, Rs 10000 afterwards
Nov 27 World Usability Date, Pune 2008 (part of the Usability Conference: This event is a part of the Usability Engineering conference listed a couple of lines above; but this part of the conference (3pm to 6pm) is free and open to all.
Nov 29 Barcamp Pune 5: If you don’t know what a barcamp is read this to find out and figure out why you should attend.
Dec 4,5,6,7 Pune Design Festival 2008: Fees and registration details not yet available
Dec 06+ ClubHack – 2-day InfoTech Security Conference: One day of presentations on security, and one day of workshops. INR 1000 for talk sessions, INR 1000 for each workshop. On the spot registration INR 1500
Dec 12+ Society of Technical Communication – 2-day conference on technical writing: Fees and registration details not yet available
Dec 17 CSI Pune Lecture: Data Management for BI: next in the Business intelligence series by SAS R&S India. Fees most likely: Rs. 100 for others, Rs 50 for Persistent employees
Dec 20 OpenSocial Developer Garage: Conference for OpenSocial developers and enthusiasts. This is a free conference, but by invitation only – Register here to be considered for invitation.

And there are some great events in January too.

Did we miss any? Please add them to the common tech events calendar of Pune. Or, send us a mail with details of the event, and we’ll add it.

Pune OpenCoffee Club meeting: Pune startup’s pain points

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What: Pune OpenCoffee Club get-together. Solving the pain points of Pune’s startups

When: Saturday, 22nd November, 4pm – 7pm

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

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

Details:

The

Are you a Pune startup struggling with issues that you shouldn’t need to struggle with? Electricity. Access to good service providers: CA, STPI registration, Website design, hosting? Difficulty with hiring? Need an SEO expert, but no idea who is realiable/worth it? Looking for someone to help you with facilities/furniture? Looking for Masters/PhD in mathematics/statistics to consult and don’t know where to look? Its very likely that your peers have faced the same problems and some have found solutions the hard way. Let’s discuss in a group and look for specific suggestions from those who’ve been there, done that. We’ll try to moderate the discussion aggressively to ensure relevance, and prevent tangents and rambling, or pointless bitching. We’ll try to collect and tabulate the most useful answers and post them on the web for the benefit of others. If you are unable to attend the meeting, but do have a question that you would like to raise, you can email them to me (navin@punetech.com) and I’ll try to get them asked/answered.

Also, if you are a Pune startup and would like to demo your product to or present it to the community at this get-together, please get in touch with us.

The Pune OpenCoffee Club meets on the third Saturday of every month from 4 to 7 pm at SICSR. (This time, we moved it to the 4th Saturday due to a phantom conflict with Barcamp Pune.) In addition, there is Startup Cinema – information about with you can find on the POCC mailing list. Often, there are also other ad hoc meetings organized by members of POCC. See the PuneTech calendar for a comprehensive list of all upcoming tech events in Pune.

CSI Lecture: Data Management for Business Intelligence

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Computer Society of India – Pune Chapter presents the second lecture in a series on Data warehousing. The first lecture gave an overview of BI and DW. The second lecture was about how these techniques are used by businesses. This is the third in the series:

What: Data Management for Business Intelligence by Ashwin Deokar of SAS R&D India.

When: Wednesday, November 19th, 2008, 6:30pm to 8:30pm
Where: Dewang Mehta Auditorium, Persistent Systems, Senapati Bapat Road
Entry: Free for CSI Members, Rs. 100 for others. Register here.

Details – Data Management for Business Intelligence

This lecture will cover the various issues in Data Management of Business Intelligence solutions: Why is Data management and data quality important, What is Data management, Components of Data management, Factors affecting Data management, Key Challenges in Data management, Data Quality, Data Quality process

It is not necessary to have attended the previous lecture.

For more information about other lectures in this series, and in general other tech events in Pune, see the PuneTech events calendar.

About the speaker – Ashwin Deokar

Ashwin is working as a business unit head with SAS R&D Pune. Heading the OnDemand Solution group. Ashwin has over 10 year of experience in ERP, DW, BI & Analytics across multiple domains like manufacturing, CPG, Retail, Banking & Insurance. He has been with SAS for 6 years under various roles like Project Manager, Senior Consultant, Business Unit head.

What is barcamp, and why you should attend barcamp Pune (Nov 29)

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What: Barcamp Pune 5

When: 29th November, all day

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

Registration and fees: Are you kidding? (Actually, register at the barcamp homepage.)

What is barcamp?

A barcamp is a conference that is the opposite of conference. Conferences are arranged by people in suits who have expert committees to decide agendas, and scheduled printed on glossy paper 3 months in advance. By contrast, a barcamp is organized (or unorganized, actually) by the T-shirt and jeans types. There is no agenda, no schedule. You just show up, and anybody can announce a talk, and preferably it shouldn’t be pre-prepared. For a more formal introduction to barcamp, check out the wikipedia entry for barcamp. (Encyclopedia Britannica doesn’t have an entry for barcamp!)

So anyway, a barcamp sounds like chaos, right? Surprisingly, it works very well. A barcamp is one of the best places to go to get a feel for the pulse of the tech community. You’ll meet interesting people and get introduced to interesting new technologies. Tarun Chandel, the grand old man of barcamps in Pune, said this after Barcamp Pune 4:

Let me go back around 20 years and take a look at the life of a developer. It was simpler than your life isn’t it? He just had to learn one or two languages and the career was rolling (you don’t believe me ask any of your bosses). Let me come back to you. I am sure you all know at-least 3 languages in which you can produce code for living. But how many of you are confident that you will be able to make a career like the guys did 20 years back?? The reality is that the innovation is happening at an unbelievable rate today, oh sorry I cant fool you guys you are insiders and as insiders we know that the splurge of various technologies, languages, platforms is because of the work that people have been doing for a long time. For an outsider there are too many things happening suddenly but for an insider this is not a surprise but a time when all the things are peeking and coming together perfectly. To be successful at this time we have to make sure that we are riding on the top of the tide. It is easier said than done. It takes a lot of time and effort to be just aware of all that is happening in the technology space. A developer needs to be aware of so many things at once and not only that he should be ready to work with newer things as early as they happen. It is not easy to keep pace with the speed of innovation and ever changing world of technology, how much time do you guys get out of your project work? The pressure is enormous to deliver, where is the time for other things?

Barcamp Pune or similar events are the place that gives you a present snapshot of the world around you (or let me put it this way gives you a heavy dose of all the technology related things that you missed or are still missing). There is a learning curve in all the places so is there a leaning curve in Barcamp Pune as well. You come here and get excited about new things technologies, you go back and whenever you get time, say the code repository server is down or your manger has fallen ill you can read in details about what you learned here. You come back for the next time and you attend a workshop on the same got to learn how to code or use the technology. You go back home and run some code get your hands dirty learn few new things. You again come here and this time you share with other campers what you have learned and they will share what they learned and you will improve yourself. Isn’t that great!!! I read somewhere that you retain 95% of what you share with others.

We have a very experienced Barcamp crowd in Pune but just for those who were there for the first time, let me repeat what I said at the starting session of the event that, the onus of getting best out of camp lies with you. There is a famous rule of Barcamp “Law of 2 feet” that is, you will have to use your 2 feet to walk to a place where you can learn, if you are not learning walk out of that place (no one will mind) and go to a place where you can learn or share. Meet as many people as you can and network and use this gathering of intelligent people wisely.

So mark your calendars, and head to SICSR for a Saturday of unorganized tech fun.

And check the PuneTech calendar for other exciting tech events that have been planned for you in the next few months (for example, I bet you did not know about the Conference on Advances in Usability Engineering?)

Interesting blog posts by Pune’s techies

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This is a round-up of some recent intersting blog posts written by Pune’s techies. These blogs don’t necessarily fall within the narrow charter of PuneTech, but introducing PuneTech readers to these blogs and bloggers does.

At the top of everyone’s mind is of course the financial meltdown. Arun Prabhudesai (who is CEO of hover.in) details the serious effects it is beginning to have on Indian industry, and on the jobs of regular people:

L&T Infotech is trimming its work force by 5%. That would mean a job loss for 10000 people. Goldman Sachs has fired 100 employees in Mumbai and 30 in Bangalore.  Satyam has fired 30 employees over fudged bills. Corus steel (part of Tata Steel now) has cut 400 jobs in UK because of poor business conditions. Tata Steel has ruled out any jobs cuts in India. Airlines are fearing that they have to lay off 8000 ground staff. Kingfisher has announced a 90% cut in the salaries of trainee pilots. Jet Airways has sacked 25+ expat pilots.

See the full article for even more scary figures. His blog (trak.in) is focused on Indian Business. Amit Paranjape also has a series of posts about the financial crisis (one, two, three) that you might find interesting. He also writes about Pune’s history, restaurant reviews, and cricket. (While on the subject of the financial crisis, you should also check out Sequoia Capital’s 56-slide presentation of doom. That is really scary.)

So what is to be done in these bad times? Manas Garg points out that before any success, whether it is in good times or bad, there is a dip.  And you need to persist and make it through the dip before you succeed. (see also Seth Godin’s thoughts on this.) Another thing that can be done, technologically, is to cut costs by shifting from real servers to virtual servers in the cloud. Mukul Kumar of Pubmatic often writes detailed posts about this on his blog, but in his most recent post, he cautions you to take into account the cost of data transfers in your calculations, as that is likely to be more expensive in some cases, than the cost of compution time on the servers.

Switching gears to security, the ClubHack blog warns us about “Free Public WiFi” – why it is bad, and how it works:

If an unsuspecting healthy laptop is searching for wireless networks in vicinity, it will see the advertised viral SSID in its list. If the laptop is configured to “Connect to any wireless network” as it comes in range, it will attach itself to the respective network. The connection can also be made when an unsuspecting user manually connects to an advertised viral SSID. As soon as this connection is made, the viral SSID appears in the PNL of the healthy laptop and thus gets infected.

Read the full article. And if you’ve been following the PuneTech calendar, you’ll know that ClubHack is organizing a security awareness conference in Pune in early December.

Just because of scary financials and scary security warnings, doesn’t mean that we need to go around feeling depressed. In fact, this is probably the best time to start something new, get involved in the community. PuneTech gave you an idea of upcoming tech community activities that you can get involved in. (By the way, the Pune Mirror agrees with us, and reprinted that article on Saturday.) Anthony Hsiao of entrip.com got together with other tech entrepreneurs in Pune to start Startup Cinema. Read about it on his blog. Also, don’t forget to check out his older post on why he prefers the chaos of Pune to the perfection of Singapore/Germany.

Pune is different, of course, and being away really helped appreciate the warmth of the people, the beauty of apparent chaos and disorder (having lived in Singapore and Zurich, I can honestly say that happiness is not derived from perfection…), the very decent lifestyle I can afford as an expat here (despite being constantly broke!), and just the interesting stuff that goes on all the time (it has to, there are so many people here, something has to be going on all the time).
In many ways, I think Pune (or many parts of India in general) are quite the opposite to places like Singapore – which is clean, orderly, safe, modern, connected, etc.

Know of any interesting techies in Pune who should be featured here? Let us know.

In the downturn, get involved with the tech community

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The next few months are going to be a thrilling time to be a techie in Pune. On the one hand, the financial meltdown is suddenly making its presense felt uncomfortably close to home – multiple companies are firing 5% of their employees, and ASSOCHAM promises more (retracted under pressure); bonuses are being cancelled; salaries are being reduced (yup! negative increments). The word “thrilling” goes both ways.

On the other hand, there are some really great tech events that are coming up and what better to do during a downturn than network with a bunch of people who are passionate about technology that you are interested in! (I know that a lot of you techies really dislike networking – I was like that once. One of these days, I am going to write an article for engineers on how to do networking without feeling like a cheap salesman.)

This is your chance to get involved with the tech community. It means increased exposure to interesting work that is going on elsewhere in Pune. It means improving your tech skills by becoming aware of latest trends and techniques. It means making friends with some really passionate people who share your interests. It means greatly increasing your chances of getting lucky.

With that in mind, I am listing the major tech events that are coming up soon. Many of them (but not all of them) are volunteer driven, so they need your help. Please get involved. Help the community, help Pune, and help yourself all in one shot.

Barcamp Pune 5 aka BCP5. The big daddy of volunteer-driven tech events in Pune. This will be the fifth installment. A must visit, if you want to see energy and enthusiasm. And it is in a bit of trouble as the date keeps getting postponed due to lack of a venue. Get involved, make it happen and become famous, and earn the gratitude of the community who are keenly looking forward to the barcamp. Date not yet fixed – tentatively November 15th (but almost certain to be postponed now).

The IndicThreads conference on Java Technologies. Not a volunteer driven event, but a big event for all Java lovers. If you work in Java, it would be difficult to justify why you are not attending, and Java people from all over India will be attending. Dates: 25 to 27 November.

ClubHack, a group of volunteers interested in educating the public on security issues, is organizing the ClubHack 2008 conference which will feature presentations and workshops on security issues that you must worry about in this big bad world of viruses, trojans, phishing, and all sorts of dangerous threats that are lurking around the corner waiting to pounce upon your computer and your bank account as soon as you let down your guard. Better to be prepared than to be sorry. Dates: 6 & 7 December.

The OpenSocial Developer Garage. A volunteer-driven get-together of OpenSocial developers from all over India. They are looking for a venue, for sponsors, for speakers, and for volunteers. Check out the OSD mailing list. Date: 20 December.

The TCS Excellence in Computer Science Week will feature lectures by experts from all over the world on the topic of de-centralized and co-operative computing. The last day to apply is today, so hurry. A world-class event is happening in your backyard, and is free – why wouldn’t you go? Date: 5 to 9 January.

Other, smaller, but more regular events:

The Pune GNU/Linux Users Group meets on the first Saturday of every month, but this time they postponed it by a day due to Diwali vacations. They are meeting tomorrow (Saturday, 8th November) at 4pm. Getting involved with the open source community is a great way to sharpen your skills, improve your resume and get to know some of the most passionate techies. They also have a Code Camp coming up on November 21st.

The Pune OpenCoffee Club, a group of Pune-based entrepreneurs and expectant entrepreneurs meets regularly and informally. Just yesterday they got together for a movie courtesy Entrip.com. The POCC monthly meeting, normally on the third Saturday of every month, might happen on the 4th Saturday (22 November) this month so as to not clash with the barcamp. Keep checking the PuneTech calendar – the event will be announced there soon.

The Pune Chapter of the Project Management Institute (PMI-Pune), is a very active organization, and their regular monthly meetings happen on the second Saturday every month. That luckily happens to be tomorrow, and this time will feature three talks, one on “Six Sigma for organizational excellence”, another talk giving information on the “Right to Information” (and you have a right to have that information), and finally one on “Trends in Project Management”.

So get out there, and start networking, start volunteering. Please.

Calling all open-source product development companies

Miscellaneous, ,

Browne and Mohan, a global consulting firm is attempting a maiden research study on Open Source Product Development companies from India. So if you are aware of a company that develops some open source product (or offering open-source based productized offerings like SaaS) please get in touch with Browne and Mohan (ganapathy@browneandmohan.com or trmadanmohan@gmail.com). Please note, the report will be free to share and remix for all future studies and references. Also, this study is not supported by any vendors and all the costs are completely borne by Browne & Mohan only.

Sounds like a useful study, and the fact that the results will be made freely available (as in beer and as in speech) makes it a good effort to support. Also, a strong participation from Pune-based companies will benefit Pune’s visibility. So please participate, encourage others to participate, and forward this to your friends.

Additionally, we at PuneTech would love to feature such interesting companies and technologies on PuneTech – so get in touch with us too.

Here are more details of the Browne and Mohan study from TR Madan Mohan:

Open source products are a reflection of maturity of entrepreneurship and innovation in an economy. Understanding the status of open source product companies, their offerings, the challenges they are facing and how they are responding to the larger economic turmoil is important. Moreover, it is unfortunate the attention of media, researchers and analysts covering India is predominantly focussed on software services only. Little is known or published about the Open source products from India. Towards filling up this gap, Browne & Mohan, a global consulting firm is attempting a maiden research study on Open Source Product Development companies from India. The objective of the study is to highlight their product, the strategies adopted, growth options for these companies in international markets etc. Based on the extensive study, a report shall be released through a Creative Commons License. Hence, the report shall be free to share and remix for all future studies and references. Pl. note this study is not supported by any vendors and all the costs are completely borne by Browne & Mohan only. We expect the report and subsequent coverage benefit the Open Source Product Companies directly and the larger cause of innovation from India indirectly. A copy of the report shall also be sent to Punetech members.

We request Punetech members support and encouragement for this endeavor. ny company that has an open source product (those offering productised services such as SaaS) are the targeted audiences. Pl. forward the details of the companies you are aware of, including the email id’s of key contacts and help us speard the reach. Thank you for your support. Pl. forward the information to ganapathy@browneandmohan.com or mail to trmadanmohan@gmail.com

Thanking you in advance:

TR Madan Mohan

About Browne & Mohan

Browne & Mohan is a management consulting firm that employs integrated approaches to solve client issues. Browne existed as an independent consulting company till February 2008 registered in Toronto and keeping in with the growth of new partners it was rechristened as Browne & Mohan in March 2008. With offices in India, Dubai, USA, Canada and Singapore, we bring together multi-cultural expertise and best practices across countries, industries and verticals. With backgrounds in management, finance, KPO, legal, medicine, our consultants work in an environment which nurtures creative analysis and integrated approach to issues. Browne & Mohan team consists of thought leaders, industry experts and experiences professionals drawn from different industries. We pride in attracting entrepreneurial professionals who not only can “think out of a box”, but “walk the talk” driving the implementation. Indian arm of Browne & Mohan consists of former academic who had taught at prestigious Indian Institute of Management, consulting professionals, investment banking professionals, and heads of analytical research of large multinational companies. for more details see, http://www.browneandmohan.com.

Pune GNU/Linux Users Group meeting – Nov 8

Events, , ,

What: Pune Linux Users Group (PLUG) monthly meeting

When: Saturday, 8th November. 4pm to 6pm.

Where: Symbiosis Institute of Computer Studies and Research (SICSR), 7th floor, Atur Center, Model Colony, Pune, India (Map)

Registration and Fees: The event is free for all. No registration required.

Details

The PLUG meeting is open to all, there are no charges or pre-requisites to attend the meeting. If you are intrested in FOSS (Free/Open Source Software) you are welcome to the meeting. If you want to give a talk or a demo, you are welcome.

This meeting happens on the first Saturday of every month, at the same place and time (but was delayed by a week this month because of Diwali). Usually, a PuneJava talk organized by IndicThreads also happens immediately after the PLUG meeting, but is not happening probably because of the big upcoming Java conference around the end of November organized by the same people.

As usual, keep checking the PuneTech calendar for interesting tech events in Pune.