Tag Archives: education

Acad DevCon: Microsoft Technologies Conference for Students – 18 Jan

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pug_logoThis post by Pradnya Naik explains what Acad DevCon 2009 is, and why you should attend, and is reproduced here with permission.

ACAD DEVCON is a major event organized by Microsoft Student Partners and PUG in Pune to explain the most innovative and cutting edge technologies in Microsoft. So the question is who are Microsoft Student Partners and what is PUG?

Microsoft Student Partners are a group of enthusiastic students selected by Microsoft who love to explore and experiment with Microsoft products. Our main aim is to share knowledge among the student community because we believe in the proverb “teach one teach all”.We have been conducting developer’s conferences for students since 2005 and all events have been a major success…. The areas of interest not only limit to developing web based and windows based applications but also expand in areas of servers, operating systems and robotics.

Pune User Group is an association of professionals and students interested in technology who are dedicated and devoted to the noble cause of spreading knowlege. Every year PUG organises an event named DEVCON for professionals where experts address and give sessions to developers community. At present the whole organising team in Pune is an interested group of 25 people including MSP’s and the members cross the mark of 3000.

ACAD DEVCON is an event to get students from all colleges under one roof to share, collaborate and communicate ideas about their knowledge on various MS technologies. The sessions are interactive accompanied with onspot demos for better understanding of the subject.

What more !!!every student who attends ACAD DEVCON gets a kit for developing excellent applications on full version softwares provided at no charge.

So what are you waiting for!! Be there on 18th Jan, 2009 at COEP for ACAD DEVCON, 2009

For more information please click on ACAD DEVCON, 2009

About the author – Pradnya Naik

Pradnya, in her own words:

I go about the saying “Love what you do ..Do what you love..” A student by profession I love art, music, dance, travel and sports. I am a technology enthusiast and love working with computers. I believe that there is no end to learning and spreading knowlege and perfection comes with speed. I love to teach and so I became a Microsoft Student Partner, wherein I explore and explain Microsoft technologies to student community. It has been real fun to be a part of this campaign… So explore my blog to know me more… and ya keep smiling and be Happy…

You follow Pradnya’s blog, or you can follow her on twitter.

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Get student interns for 6-months for your company

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As a part of their course, students of courses like MCA and MSc CA are required to do a 6-month internship in the industry. Normally, students are expected to find the internships on their own, as a result of which, smaller companies and startups without much visibility lose out on this stream of students.

To fix this we are arranging a “speed-date” for companies to quickly give a very short pitch (3 minutes) about themselves and then meet many students in a short time so that in a single meeting companies can quickly shortlist probable candidates, and conversely candidates can quickly shortlist probable companies for further interviews. This will happen on January 22, 4:30pm at SICSR. If you are interested, send me a mail (navin@punetech.com). Hurry, offer valid until stocks last.

What to expect

  • These are students of the M.Sc. in Computer Applications offered by SICSR. They will know programming (java, javascript, PHP, Ajax, databases) quite well. They will also know computer science fundamentals (algorithms, etc.) but not quite as well as a B.E. student. See http://www.symbiosiscomputers.com/v5/programmes/programmes_msccastructure.php for details of their curriculum
  • The students can start working for you immediately, and will work for 5 to 6 months – i.e. until mid-June. This is supposed to be a full-time job for the students during this period.
  • You would be expected to pay the students a stipend of about 4k/5k per month (or more depending on quality of students and competition). The official line is that they are required to do this to learn something, and not for the money. (It’s a requirement for their degree and they cannot graduate without this experience.)
  • You would be expected to give an evaluation of the student’s work to the college
  • In one of the previous POCC meetings, I heard someone say that they had a good experience with SICSR student interns. If you or someone else has experience with SICSR interns, please share it here for the benefit of the community. Please share negative experiences also, if you’ve had any.

Interested?

  • Send me (navin@punetech.com) a requirement profile describing the kind of project/work you are willing to offer by Thursday, 15th January. This will be cirtulated amongst the students. Describe your company, and the project/role. Please also indicate whether you are willing to receive some resumes of interested students beforehand.
  • On Thursday, 22nd Jan, 4:30pm to 7:30pm, there will be a “speed date” kind of an event, where each one of you will get 3 minutes to pitch your company and/or projects. At the end, you get a table where interested students come and talk to you for a maximum of 5 minutes. In this time, you should get a quick judgement of whether you want call this student for a further interview. The expectation is that at the end of the day, you have a short list of students that you are interested in interviewing, and who are interested in working for you.
  • Due to time constraints, the number of slots is limited. So, in case we receive more entries than we can accomodate, we’ll choosed on a first-come-first-served basis.

We are trying to include other colleges with similar programs. I’ll send out updates as more info becomes available.

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Peepaal – Bringing Industry and Academics Together

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improving engineering education in PuneThis 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.

Related links:

Know any other Pune initiatives that belong to this series? Let us know.

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Do an industry-supported “free” PG Diploma in Systems Programming

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This is the second 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. Today we cover KQInfoTech’s idea of having a 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.

KQInfoTech was started by Anurag Agarwal and Anand Mitra, both of whom chucked high-paying jobs in the industry because they felt that there was a desperate need to work on the quality of students that is being churned out by our colleges. For the last year or so, they have been trying various experiements in education, at the engineering college level. All their experiments are based on one basic premise: students’ ability to pay should not be a deterrent – in other words, the offerings should be free for the students; KQInfoTech focuses on finding alternative ways to pay for the costs of running the course. Their latest offering is the KQInfoTech PG Diploma in Systems programming which they explain thus:

This PG Diploma is for the people looking for making a career in the system programming.

It is a program in the “Gurukul” tradition of education. There are two unique features to this program :

  • Cost: Your education does not depend on your capacity to pay. This course is effectively free. Your education gets paid by your work during this program.
  • Work experience: You are also getting real industry work experience during your education. During this course, you will get one year worth industry experience.

Does working in Linux Kernel, writing device drivers for Unix and Windows, writing system level programs that interacts closely with operating system interests you? But you don’t have the right skill set for this.

KQInfotech is lead by people who have spent decades working in the area of file system, kernel programming, Linux kernel etc. They are ready to educate you in “Art of System Programming”. Are you ready for all the hard and interesting work required?

It is a unique post graduate program of one year, which would provide you education as well as work experience. This program will cover Unix internals, Linux kernel programming, Multi-threading, Windows internals, Writing device drivers etc.
1. Industry Experience

Experience gained working on live industry project is more important than just theory based education. Two third of this program’s duration will be spent on real industry project as interns. Beside gaining industry experience, internship makes this program free for participants.
2. Course Details

Experience of Unix or System Programming is not a pre-requisite for the course.

The course is divided into three broad areas namely Unix internals, Linux Kernel and Windows System programming. To cement the concepts candidate will have to submit a month long project or thesis in each area. Whole course is divided into a number of modules. These modules are:

  • Introduction of Unix
  • Advance system programming in Unix
  • Rapid development tools
  • POSIX multi threading
  • Linux Kernel internals
  • Linux device driver development
  • WinAPI
  • Windows device driver development

Each module will be covered over a duration of 4 to 6 weeks and each project will run for 4 weeks.The program stresses on imparting knowledge through practicals and hence more than 50% of the time will be spent on programming.

3. Eligibility

Participants with following qualifications can apply for this course.

  • BCS, or BSc with Computer Science
  • MCS/MCA final year students
  • BE in any field
  • People with industry experience

4. Selection Process

Candidates will be selected on the basis of a written technical and aptitude test, followed by a technical and personal interview. Syllabus for technical test contains :

  • C programming language
  • Data structure and algorithms
  • Operating system concepts

Entrance exam will be held on 20th Jan at 10:00 AM. Duration of exam will be 2 hours.

Diploma course will start from 2nd Feb.

Next batch will start from 3rd Aug. Corresponding entrance exam will be held on 20th July.
5. Logistics

It is an intense program with 12 hours of daily commitment for one year. One third of that time would be training and the rest will be internship.

There will be security deposit of 10,000/- (Ten thousand) rupees for this course. On completion of this course, deposit will be returned to the participant. Every participant needs to have a laptop for this course, participant can bring their own laptop, or we can arrange one for them for a security deposit of 25,000/- (Twenty five thousand). At the end of the course, the participant can return the laptop to get back the deposit.

6. Placement

Market for system programming is huge. There are a large number of companies looking for people with these skills. Symantec, Symphony, Calsoft, Persistent, Marvell, KPIT, Wipro, Infosys are to name few of them.

We will provide placement assistance to all participants.

The website for this course is here. For more details on Anurag and Anand’s background see the about us page on KQInfoTech.

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Techstart.in: Nurturing the passion of our engineering students

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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
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Pune’s Satish Talim wins “Ruby’s Top Teacher in 2008” award

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Satish Talim

Satish Talim, whose RubyLearning onine classes have enrolment of more than 5000 students from over 100 countries, has been named the “Top Ruby Teacher in 2008” by RubyInside (the #1 Ruby news site in the world).

An excerpt from the article:

How (and when) did you find your way into Ruby?

After being with Java since its beta days, my interest in Ruby was aroused after I read an article Ruby the Rival in November 2005. I decided to learn Ruby myself and started making my Ruby Notes for my site, RubyLearning.com.

How have your Ruby & Rails related projects progressed in 2008?

I started my free, online Ruby teaching site in January 2008 and today it has over 5600 participants who have either learned Ruby or are in the process of learning Ruby with me. The experience has been very positive and fulfilling. I’ve also been promoting Ruby in India since 2006 with my PuneRuby User Group. I also managed to convince the the University of Pune to introduce Ruby as a full time paper in their computer science course from Jan. 2009.

With RubyLearning.org I am able to give Ruby exposure to people across the globe (there are currently students registered from over 140 countries) – we have people from far-flung places where no trainers (leave alone Ruby trainers) are available – my site facilitates that.

Read the full article for more about the award.

Satish runs two RubyLearning portals: namely RubyLearning.com (is a thorough collection of Ruby Study Notes for those who are new to the Ruby programming language and in search of a solid introduction to Ruby’s concepts and constructs) and RubyLearning.org (where, since 2006, participants from across the globe have been learning online and for free, the Ruby computer programming language).

However the RubyLearning portals are not Satish’s primary occupation. His experience lies in developing and executing business for high technology and manufacturing industry customers. Basically, he has helped start subsidiaries for many US based software companies like Infonox (based in San Jose, CA), Maybole Technologies Pvt. Ltd. (Servient Inc. based in Houston, Texas) in Pune.

You can also follow Satish on Twitter where as @IndianGuru, with over 700 followers, he is the top twitterer from Pune. (As to why you should be on twitter, see our article “Why you should be on Twitter“; and then immediately after that, you should follow @punetech, and all the others mentioned in in these posts over at AmIWorks.)

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MahaBio – A 2-day bio-technology conference at UoP – 14/15 Nov

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Event Name: MahaBio 2008 – 2-day conference on bio-technology
When: Nov 14, 15 all day.
Venue: Chandrashekhar Auditorium, IUCAA
Registraion and Fees: Details are sketchy, but I think this will be free for anyone to attend. Those interested should see the MahaBio 2008 website, and make contact at the email address provided

Details:

The event titled ‘Mahabio 2008’ will take place in Pune on November 14 and 15. Various political figures will be in attendance:  Inauguration by Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh. Presentations by Ashok Kolaskar, former vice-chancellor of UoP, A S Ninawe, vice-chancellor of Maharashtra Animal and Fisheries University, Nagpur and Dilip Deobagkar, vice-chancellor of Goa University among others.

But, Dr R A Mashelkar, chairman, Maharashtra Biotechnology Commission will address the inaugural ceremony, and also there will be actual academic papers being presented. Also, an exhibition of biotechnology will be held at Jaykar library in UoP where, about 20 industries, related to biotechnology, shall put their stalls.

So, I think, if you are interested in biotechnology, and are willing to put in a little effort to separate the wheat from the chaff, I think it will be worth visiting, at least the exhibition, if nothing else. A little more information is provided by an Indian Express article on this topic. I have sent an email to the organizers, and will update this article later today if I get a response.

Conference on Advances in Usability Engineering, Nov 27/28

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What: A 3-hour, free event for World Usability Day, and a 2-day, paid conference on usability engineering, both featuring the who’s who of Usability in Pune, and some experts from outside too.

When: World Usability Day event is from 3pm to 6pm on Nov 27th; The Conference on Advances in Usability Engineering is on Nov 27th and 28th, full day.

Where: Sumant Mulgaonkar Auditorium, ICC towers, 403-A, Senapati Bapat Road. Map.

Registration and fees: The World Usability Day event is free for all to attend, and no registration is required. The full conference fees are Rs. 3500 for professionals, Rs. 2000 for academics, and Rs. 500 for students. Details here.

Details – World Usability Day Event

A gathering of usability practitioners is organized with many participatory community events to encourage informal discussion, knowledge sharing and networking. Usability professionals, user experience designers, design teachers, IT professionals, managers, software developers, students etc. are welcome to attend.

This event will consist of the following:

Photo Essay Competition on ‘Usability in Transportation’

The participants of this competition are expected to highlight usability problems and difficulties faced by people using a series of photographs and apt description of possible solutions. The photographs have to be focusing on any of the usability problems pertaining to transportation in terms of design of vehicles, transportation systems, traffic signals, road signage systems and communication, journey booking systems, etc. It should also touch upon design, engineering, social, cultural and ergonomic issues related to transportation.

Jury members for Photo Essay Competition

Dr. Sanjay Tripathi, Senior Consultant (Usability), TechMahindra Ltd, Pune -Chairman
Bhakti Khandekar, Principal Designer-User Interface , Infosys Technologies, Pune -Member
Taral Kulkarni, Senior Usability Engineer, Persistent Systems Ltd., Pune -Member
Kedar Kadam, Usability Engineer , Persistent Systems Ltd., Pune -Member

Usability Quiz

It is going to be a fun quiz contest to test our know-how of usability. The quiz will cover questions related to web-usability, user centered design process, human factors, user experience design etc. The best answer for each question will be awarded! So come prepared for the Usability Quiz!

Quiz Coordinators

Ganesh Gaikwad, Principal Human Factors Engineer, Symantec, Pune
Atul Manohar, Lead User Experience Management Practice , Satyam Computer Services , Ltd. Pune
Nagesh Susarla, Manager / Principal UI Designer, Symantec Pune
Shashank Deshpande, Director , Clarice Technologies , Pune.

Panel Discussion on ‘Multi-disciplinary Perspectives of Usability’

Whose property is it anyway? Engineering, Design, Management, Psychology, Ergonomics ?
It is an interactive deliberation between panelists and participants to understand the difficulties faced by those who aspire to practice usability. Following panelists will represent different domain perspectives of usability.

Panel Moderator :
Dr. Dinesh Katre, Group Head- Human Centred Design and Computing, C-DAC, Pune

Panelists :
Dr. Pradeep Yammiyavar, DoD, IIT, Guwahati – Psychology
Dr. Neela Rajhans, Professor, College of Engineering, Pune -Ergonomics
Prof. Pradeep Pendse, Dean IT/Business Design , Welingkar Institute, Mumbai. -Management
Prof. Aniruddha Joshi , Associate Professor , IDC , IIT , Mumbai. -Design
Mr. Sameer Chabukswar, Head, Usability Engineering, Persistent Systems Ltd. Pune -Engineering

Details – Conference on Advances in Usability Engineering

Normally, we at PuneTech do not feature information about paid workshops, trainings, or conferences. But every once in a while, an event comes along which appear to have exceptional technical content, which in our subjective opinion makes it worth the money. The Conference on Advances in Usability Engineering, 2008, hosted by Vishwakarma Institute of Information Technology, is one such event, where the impressive list of speakers, and the detailed schedule makes us feel that this could be a good event to attend. (Please note: PuneTech is a purely non-commercial website and does not take any considerations (monetary or otherwise) for any of the content on the site. Decision to feature content on the site is made by the editors purely on the basis of interestingness and technical content.)

Broad themes of the conference:

Offshore Usability
Cross-cultural aspects, remote usability methods and tools, challenges in user requirements research, etc.

Usability to Bridge the Digital Divide
Designing ICT products and applications for rural users, such as e-governance, e-learning, localization of user interface.

Usability Engineering
Institutionalisation, processes & practices, multidisciplinary dimensions, best usability practice, impact of adaptation of user centred design approach in SDLC process and project management, agile process, interaction design and client architecture, internationalisation of user interface, etc.

User Experience Design for New Media
Web, Mobile, PDA, Touch-screen, new interaction models, interaction design for development, etc.

User Experience Research
Tying user experience to strategic business innovation objectives, UX methods and research approaches for emerging markets with unique technology adoption curves, user experience innovations for Indian consumer and enterprise products, next generation user-driven technologies, etc.

Multidisciplinary Challenges of HCI in Education
Fusion of diverse disciplines in the syllabus of Human-Computer Interaction, user experience design thinking into the design / engineering / management curriculum, etc.

If you are not familiar with Usability, or not convinced as to why it is such a vitally important field of study, check out past PuneTech articles on usability.

Career Guidance Workshop by CSI PUne

Events, , , ,

Career Guidance Workshop 2008

Following last years hugely successful career guidance workshop, the Computer Society of India, Pune Chapter is organizing yet another program to help young professionals (freshers) and students.
Looking at the current trend, students and freshers are always looking for brighter opportunities and want to do something “different”. To help such students and freshers, we have organized a Career Guidance Workshop, where experienced industry leaders will talk about different domains, and opportunities in those domains. Whether you want to learn something new, or are seriously looking for a job, this workshop will definitely help you. There are two parts of this workshop. One, which talks about alternate and upcoming technologies, and the second, which talks about IT in the non-IT fields. Students and freshers usually have a limited view of the scope and trends in the industry. Through this workshop, we want to help students gain a better understanding of various domains, and provide them some direction, which might eventually help them choose a bright career.

Here is an outline of the program.

Date: 11th October 2008
Venue: Dewang Mehta Auditorium,Persistent Systems Ltd.’Bhageerath’,  402, Senapati Bapat Road, Pune 411016

Time: 3pm to 7pm

Program Details:

Registration: 3.00 to 3.30 p.m.


Panel 1 – Alternate Technologies – Panel coordinator – Monish Darda (3.30pm to 5:00pm)

Technology Suggested speaker
Rich Internet Applications Ramesh Shrinivasraghavan – Adobe
Gaming Ninad Chaya – Jump games
Open Source Amit Kale – LinSysSoft
Mobile Application Vishwesh Jirgale – Azingo
GIS Dr. Rao- Lavasa


Tea Break: 5:00pm to 5.30pm

Panel 2 – IT in non-IT Panel co-ordinator – Anand Paranjape (5.30pm to 7pm)

Industry Suggested speaker
Eng./ Manufacturing Kishore Daryanani – Alfa Laval
Automobile Anil Khopkar (Bajaj)
Life science Image Informatics Abhi Gholap (Optra systems)
Science Amit Dangle (Indo Global)


Charges: Rs. 100 for non-CSI members and Rs. 50 for CSI members. To register, head to www.csi-pune.org.

Reading list for startup-founders

In Depth, , ,

Earlier, we published a list of free web services that a company can use to better run their business. However, tools do not really make or break a company. Having the right attitude, and making the right decisions at the right time is much more important. If you are a startup founder, it is not necessary that you learn everything from your mistakes at the school of hard knocks. You can try to benefit from the experiences of countless others who have learnt from their own successes and failures, and have survived to write blog posts about them. 

To educate you, Sukshma.net (the blog of Santosh and Anjali, founders of Bookeazy and Lipikaar) have put together this list of articles and books that they found useful in their own journey. Here is a full list, shamelessly plagiarized from there, (to save my lazy readers from one extra click, I hope they don’t mind):

Think Big!

1st Month: Bullet-proof your idea.

2nd Month: Raise Money, or scrape some together.

3rd Month: Define your value proposition.

4th Month: Iterative Innovation.

5th Month: Advertising.

7th Month: Momentum

  • 7 months in to my 2nd stint as Startup CEO – Jason Goldberg. Sorry. This link has gone off the internet. It used to be at http://blog.socialmedian.com/2008/08/7_months_into_my_2nd_stint_as.html but the whole blog disappeared after Jason sold social|median to Xing. If you’re able to find a copy of this article, please let us know. Lot’s of Pune people want to read it.

9th Month: Profit for sustainability.

Raising serious money from Professional Investors/Venture Capitalists.

Master your disruptive contribution.

Managing up and down.

Other books worth reading.

The Economics of Media and E-Commerce businesses.

I need inspiration. I need to know this has happened to others. It’s never too late to start over.

Read Founders@Work. Just turn to any story, any page and start reading. This is not to be read in one go, it’s most useful when you think you’re a complete idiot. Also, don’t forget to read Guy Kawasaki’s list of best pages from the book. Make your own list. We both have our list that we’ll put on the blog someday.

Startup Resources from around the web.

Remember to check the source, as they are promising to keep updating that list based on your suggestions (leave a comment).