Tag Archives: Events

Top Indian Startup Event Unpluggd coming to Pune

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Pluggd.in is one of the most influential sites as far as coverage of Indian startups is concerned, and their event Unpluggd is now one of the premiere startup events in the country.

Unpluggd is coming to Pune on 19th November, so everybody interested in startups should seriously consider registering (click here (ayojak) or here (doattend) to buy tickets. (Ayojak is a Pune startup, so Pune loyalty dictates that you should try that first.) There is an early bird discount until 20th October (that’s just 2 days away), so you’ll need to hurry. (Use the code PIBUDDY to get your discount.)

If you have a startup, then Unpluggd is a great platform for showcasing your product. The who’s who of Indian startups will be here, and not only do you get exposure, but it also looks good on your startup’s resume (“selected for Unpluggd 2011”). So nominate yourself. Take a look at the nomination FAQs. (And while you’re in the nominating mood, if you happen to be a B2B startup, then nominate yourself for Pune Connect 2011 also.)

If you haven’t started your startup yet, but have an idea, and would like to get it kickstarted AND featured at Unpluggd, there is a way. Unpluggd is holding a Hackathon on 4/5/6 November in Bangalore, where they will provide you with everything necessary to convert your idea into a prototype – Mentors, Domain Experts, Food, Infrastructure. Two winning entries from Hackathon will get to demo their product at Unpluggd Pune. This is also a paid event, and the registration pages are the same as those for Unpluggd (links above; use early bird discount code HACKBUDDY).

Important dates: 20th Oct – deadline for early bird discount on Unpluggd. 4/5/6 Nov, Hackathon. 6th Nov, deadline for startup nomination for Unpluggd. 19th Nov Unpluggd.

(Note: Normally, PuneTech does not promote paid events on the front page (although we do include them in the PuneTech Calendar. We make exceptions if the ticket price is nominal (e.g. the Rs. 100 that TiE Pune charges for some of its events) or if the event is important enough and the price is low (e.g. a national/international event with a price that’s not too high). Unpluggd is being plugged here since it is in the second category.)

The Pune Effect or Why every technology conference must come to Pune

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“The Pune Effect: Any tech (un-)conference that happens in multiple cities in India will have its highest attendance when it comes to Pune”

It probably started in Sept, 2008, when PHPCamp got 1200+ online registrations, and 700+ people actually turned up, making it the largest unconference in India.

The following year, we organized an “Internship Mela” for students looking for internships amongst Pune’s startups, and we had to turn away 100s of students from the gates after we somehow managed to accommodate 800+.

Over the years, this trend has continued.

When DocType HTML5 came to Pune, the organizers had to shut down registrations after getting more than 600 registrations.

In July 2011, organizers of the Java 7 Launch event in Pune had to hastily shift the venue of the event to a larger hall when, unexpectedly, 400+ people registered unexpectedly

When we organized PyCon Pune, the International Python Conference, we were expecting it to be much smaller than the first two PyCon’s that were held in Bangalore, since the Python community in Bangalore is much stronger. However, once again, we had to close registrations after the number of paid registrations hit 650, since the venue wouldn’t take any more. Raymond Hettinger tweeted that this was probably the biggest PyCon outside the US.

Once is happenstance. Twice is co-incidence. More than that, and it needs to be given a name and a webpage of its own. Amit Kumar Singh called it “The Pune Effect” in a tweet in response to PyCon Pune becoming the biggest PyCon outside the US.

So, this webpage is dedicated to the Pune Effect, and the amazing tech community in Pune.

And it comes with a challenge.

A challenge to all organizers of tech events in India – Why are you not in Pune? I’m looking at you, NASSCOM Product Conclave, and DrupalCamp, and Amazon AWSCamp. If you’re an organizing a tech event in India, remember that if you skip Pune, you are missing out on your largest event.

And this is also a challenge to all the techies in Pune. We have to work to maintain this reputation. Follow the PuneTech Calendar where all the tech events happening in Pune are listed (you can subscribe to get all PuneTech events sent to you via email or via RSS), and the make it a point to attend. This will definitely help your career – you become more knowledgeable, and more importantly, you get to know lots of interesting and knowledgeable people. Not only should you attend tech events, but also drag some of your shy friends with you.

The most active tech community in the country is right here in Pune. Are you a part of it?

Python, Django, Git, Virtualization and more at Fedora Activity Day 1 – Sept 24

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A Fedora Activity Day (FAD) is scheduled for Saturday, September
24, 2011, 1000 IST onwards at Red Hat office in Pune. The
objective of this FAD is to get any beginner, particularly students,
introduced to Open Source and Linux in general,
and involved in Fedora in particular, in preparation of FUDCon, Pune.

Agenda

Since this is an unconference, the final agenda will not be known until the day of the event, but you can see the agenda for the list of talks already registered. These include:

  • Introduction to Python
  • Introduction to Django
  • Communication Guidelines (on how to use IRC, wiki, mailing lists, etc)
  • Introduction to virtualization in Fedora
  • Introduction to Git – How to manage your love letters using Git

and a bunch of other talks.

Other details

Entry is to this free, but, there is limited seating capacity (maximum 70
people). If you are interested in giving a talk, please include your
name and talk details to the agenda. It is highly recommended that you
bring your laptops (with Fedora) to the event.

In addition to the sessions listed in the wiki, if you would like any
specific topic to be addressed, please contact Shakthi Kannan or
Rahul Sundaram.

The second FAD will be held in COEP on Saturday October 8, 2011.

Fees and Registration

The event will be on Saturday, 24 September, from 10am onwards at Red Hat Software, Tower X, Level-1, Cybercity, Magarpatta City, Hadapsar.

This event is free and open for anybody to attend. Please register by adding your name to the wiki here. You will be required to bring atleast one photo ID (driving license/voter ID/PAN card) to enter the premises.

Noted Cryptographer Dr. Whitfield Diffie to speak in Pune – 8 Sept

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If you have any exposure to computer security, you have heard of public key cryptography. If you’ve done a little work in the area, you are no doubt aware of the Diffie-Hellman key exchange that solves the key distribution problem, one of the fundamental problems of cryptography.

Whitfield Diffie, one of the pioneers of public key cryptography, and the co-inventor of the Diffie-Hellman key exchange will be in Pune for a few days this week, and will give a talk on 8th September as part of Uniken’s Innovation Lecture Series at COEP Auditorium. This is a day-long event that will consist of student project presentations from 10am to 4:3pm, followed by sessions by Sanjay Deshpande of Uniken and Dr. Diffie. See the event page for more details.

The event is free for anyone to attend. You can register as an attendee or register to be a student presenter of your innovative idea/project at the event page.

Uniken is a Pune-based company that builds technology in the areas of Information Security and Biometrics, Embedded Systems, Control Systems, Intelligent Software Systems and applies them to problems in Banking, Financial Services and Insurance, Media and Entertainment, Healthcare, etc.

Dr. Whitfield Diffie has recently joined the Scientific Advisory Board of Uniken.

Call for Speakers – IndicThreads Conference on Java – Dec 2011

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The call for speakers for the 6th Annual IndicThreads’ conference on Java is open. The conference itself is in December, but the CFP closes this week (10th September) and you should submit a proposal.

Pune’s http://IndicThreads.com has been holding Java conferences since 2006 and the feedback on their conferences has generally been good. You can check previous PuneTech coverage of IndicThreads to get an idea.

The conference itself is paid, but becoming a speaker is a good way to get into it for free.

Suggested topics are:

  • Java Language Specs & Standards
  • Enterprise Java
  • Java For Mobile Devices
  • Java for Multi-core Computing
  • Optimization, Scaling, Caching and Performance Tuning
  • Cloud Computing for Java
  • Rich Internet Applications
  • Languages for the JVM
  • Frameworks
  • Enterprise Architecture
  • Spring
  • Virtualization
  • Social Networking
  • Security
  • Agile
  • Java RIA
  • New and emerging technologies
  • Case Studies and Real World Experiences

For more details see the conference webpage

As to why you should bother to submit a proposal, see this post written for an earlier CFP which gives the reasons. And go for it now.

Note, there is also a call for speakers open for the ClubHack conference. So that gives you two avenues to showcase your work.

“Collaboration Retreat” for CIOs/CFOs/others in Pune – Sept 24

Events,

(Re-published from Mithi.com’s website)

2nd Collaboration Retreat 2011

Mithi is organising the 2nd Collaboration Retreat at Pune, an invitation-only event for select CIOs, CFOs and delegates on Saturday, 24th September 2011. The Collaboration Retreat 2011 would offer a first-of-its-kind interactive platform for sharing CIO and CFO perspectives on Collaboration Infrastructure Strategies for Cutting Costs and Managing Risks.

The 1st Collaboration Retreat 2010 organised by Mithi last year was a success. 12 CIOs and over 50 delegates from diverse organisations took time out to be with us and participated whole-heartedly in the Golf Clinic, CIO Speak session, panel discussion and Dr. D.B. Phatak’s concluding address. A majority of the CIOs and delegates found the event very interactive and informative, and the right forum to address issues & concerns related to collaboration strategies. Click here for highlights of CR 2010.

Bigger And Better

This year the event will be much bigger and wider in scope with over 30 CIOs & CFOs and 200 delegates expected to attend the full-day conference. We are happy to extend a special invite to you as a delegate for the Collaboration Retreat on Saturday 24th September 2010. You’ll have a wonderful opportunity to hear and interact with over 30 CIOs from leading companies in India.

Themes

  • Open Source options
  • Co-existence and other cost cutting strategies
  • Managing Risk
  • Cloud and New Devices
  • Social Networking

Who Should Attend

You can benefit from attending the Collaboration Retreat 2011, if you are a:

  • Chief Information Officer (CIO)
  • Chief Financial Officer (CFO)
  • Senior IT and Finance decision maker
  • IT Manager
  • Finance Manager
  • System Integration Partner
  • Enterprise/ System Administrator
  • Collaboration Technology Professional

Why you should attend

The Collaboration Retreat 2011 would offer a first-of-its-kind interactive platform for sharing CIO and CFO perspectives on Collaboration Infrastructure Strategies for Cutting Costs and Managing Risks.

The participants will have a wonderful opportunity to interact and network with over 30 CIOs & CFOs and over 200 delegates from leading organizations in India.

Registration details

The event is in MCCIA Trade Towers, ICC, SB Road, Pune, on 24th September 2011.

This is a free, invitation-only event with limited seats. If you are keen to participate, please hurry up and submit your details in this form. The organizers will confirm your participation through email.

MCUG Event: Understanding all the technology underlying a hyperlink click

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The MIT Computer Users Group presents a talk by Anirudh Tomer and Toshish Jawale on what happens under the covers when you do something simple like clicking a hyperlink. The talk is at 1:30pm on Saturday, 20th August, in room A203, E&TC Dept. MIT, Kothrud.

About the Seminar:

To see this post you must have clicked a hyperlink, and it would have hardly took seconds to open that. So easy man!!!, but what you didn’t saw was how did the computer made this possible for you.

It all started at your Brain, here is the simple flow of all events that took place in LAYMAN’s TERMS

  1. Brain sends signals to your muscles to move the mouse on link and click on Mouse, your eyes help in that movement and tell brain to click at right place.
  2. Mouse sends interrupt via USB or PS2 to Host Controller.
  3. Host controller forwarded the interrupt to Processor.
  4. Processors sent interrupt to device driver.
  5. Device driver gave control to X server (i.e display server for Linux)
  6. X server gave control to browser
  7. browsers parses that link.
  8. browser contact network card via system calls and sent the request to FB server
  9. Routers take the packet from your network card and gave it to FB server.
  10. FB server processes the request and sends the reply back
  11. Browser gets the reply back and processes the HTML code to display the new contents.
  12. X server updates the video memory buffer with new contents
  13. Monitor reads the new content from that buffer and shows new content at screen, at 60HZ (say)
  14. Eyes get the same signal at 16HZ and send it to brain
  15. Brain processes the information and validates the information, if its the right one.

and all this happened in 1 second parallely, so A MOUSE CLICK IS SO COMPLEX. In this session we are going to cover all this in detail. Since this all started at brain and ends up at brain, we call it Brain to Brain

Who Can Attend

Anyone from this universe and its a free event. Goodies waiting for you as well. So if you are one of those who keeps the passion for understanding HOW STUFF WORKS, then this is a must attend session for you. Suggestions are most welcome

About MCUG – MIT Computer Users Group

MCUG (The MIT Computer Users Group) is a student group started by students and alumni of MIT College Pune, but has now grown to include 500+ members (students as well as industry professionals) from all over India. MCUG conducts various tech activities targeting students of computer science engineering.

TechWeekend – Web Security – August 20

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TechWeekend Pune and Microsoft present a technical session web security on Saturday 20th August, 10am, at Sumant Moolgaokar Auditorium, MCCIA Trade Tower, ICC. This session will feature Rohit Srivastwa (of ClubHack) talking about some of the top web vulnerabilities, how they work, and how to prevent them, and Aditee Rele (of Microsoft) talking about the new security features in IE9.

Top Web Vulnerabilities – Rohit Srivastwa

This talk will cover 6 of the top 10 most exploited vulnerabilities on the web as reported by OWASP. Specifically:

  • Cross-Site Scripting
  • Information Leakage
  • SQL Injection
  • Local/Remote File Inclusion
  • Unrestricted uploads
  • Shell Injections

and best coding practices whereever possible.

The speaker Rohit Srivastwa is one of Pune’s most well know security evangelists. He has an expertise in cyber crime investigation and IT infrastructure management. Rohit is actively involved advising several military agencies, law enforcement personnel, media, corporate and Government bodies in these fields.

Rohit Srivastwa is also the founder of ClubHack, a member driven community to spread the security awareness. ClubHack organizes an international hacker convention in Pune every December.

For more see Rohit’s website

Security Features in IE9 – Aditee Rele

The latest version of Microsoft’s browser contains a lot of technologies focused on making the browser very safe from malware and phising attacks on the internet. It uses a new mechanism called layered protection against malware and a bunch of memory and exception handler protections to ensure that the most common ways of exploiting security holes are automatically plugged. To prevent phishing, it uses a SmartScreen filter to block bad URLs, and an application reputation mechanism to detect untrustworthy executables, providing what they claim is 100% social engineering blocking.

The speaker Aditee Rele works in the Developer and Platform Evangelism (DPE) Group at Microsoft Corporation, India. She focuses on addressing architectural challenges in the enterprise and web space and has first-hand exposure to large implementations on various platforms across Microsoft Technology Suite.

Fees and Registration

This event is free and open for anybody to attend. No registration required

The event starts at 10am, in the Sumant Moolgaonkar Auditorium, Ground Floor, Wing A, ICC Trade Center, SB Road. Please come 10 minutes early since security at the venue takes a little time, and we are planning on starting the event on time.

IPMA Event: PM Journey – From Startup to Billion Dollar Co by Amit Paranjape

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IPMA Pune, the Pune Chapter of the Indian Product Manager’s Association, presents a talk by Amit Paranjape, this Friday, from 4pm to 7pm, at BMC Software, Tower A, ICC Tech Park, SB Road. Amit will talk about his Product Management Journey – from a startup to a billion dollar company

Abstract – Product Management Journey – from a startup to a billion dollar company

Amit will discuss his experiences and learnings in product management – from helping set up the first product management team in a small startup like company, to the team’s rapid evolution as the company grew to a billion dollars in revenue, in just a short span of few years. Will discuss various aspects of product management ranging from customer requirement prioritization, development support, customer support, product marketing, industry focus, strategy, sales support, etc.

About the Speaker – Amit Paranjape

Amit Paranjape is a co-founder of PuneTech. He has been involved with several startups in India and U.S. Formerly Amit worked at i2 Technologies. Amit has over 15 years of experience in Product Management, Marketing and Strategy in the Enterprise Software Industry. He has a B.Tech in Mechanical Engineering (IIT Bombay) and an M.S. in Manufacturing Systems (University of Wisconsin Madison). His current interests include consumer internet, healthcare and enterprise software.

Agenda

  • 4.15 pm – Registrations and Networking
  • 4.30 pm – Opening Remarks
  • 4:45 pm – Talk by Amit
  • 6:00 pm – Q&A
  • 6.15 pm – Reserved for some exciting session
  • 6.30 pm – Closing Remarks

About IPMA

India Product Management Association (IPMA) is a not-for-profit, voluntary, grassroots organization. IPMA Mission is to Foster Product Design and Innovation and Catalyze Product Management/Marketing Talent in India across software, mobile, hardware, telecommunications sectors in the IT industry. IPMA organizes knowledge sharing and networking forums such as Monthly Speaker Series, Workshops, P-Camps etc for professionals interested in product management and marketing. IPMA operate chapters in major product hubs across India and for more information about upcoming events, visit indiapma.org

Fees and Registration

This event is free and open for anybody to attend. Register here

Why you should register to attend Python Conference Pune (Sept 2011) right now

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Disclaimer: I am one of the organizers of PyCon India 2011. I’m doing this as a volunteer to further the cause of Python and software development activities in India and Pune. Neither I nor PuneTech gain anything financially from promoting this activity.

PyCon India, the International Python Conference that happens in India every year, will be in Pune this year on September 16-18, 2011. Early Bird Registration – Rs. 300 (includes lunch, 3 days) is open until the end of the week August 15. Register now!

If you need convincing as to why you should attend Pycon, here are some reasons:

  • Raymond Hettinger, one of the top pythonistas in the world is the keynote speaker. Raymond (@raymondh on twitter) is a Python core developer. He is the author of the itertools and set modules and most of the collections modules in the standard library, the peephole optimizer for Python, and dozens of ASPN cookbook recipes. It will literally be many years before you get a chance to hear a technologist of this calibre.
  • Learn Python: This is your chance to learn Python. Start learning Python right now, and by September, you’ll be ready to get maximum value out of the tutorials in the conference (including Twitter/Facebook/Linked-in/Google Data hacking, web scraping, image processing, and functional programming using Python). If you need arguments on why everybody must learn python check here, here and here.
  • Excellent Talks: There are 24 high quality talks, on all kinds of interesting topics including Data Analysis and Business Intelligence, Python-to-Javascript cross-compliation, Telephony apps, Robotics, Web Apps, Python in Biology and Life-Sciences, Cloud Computing, Android, testing, GIS, and much more. There is also one talk on using Python to do your homework.
  • Meet Smart People: Even if you don’t agree that people who choose to work with Python are smarter than most others, you will have to agree that this will be one pretty darn interesting bunch of 500+ developers from all over India and outside. Rs. 300 to get a chance for that kind of networking is nothing.
  • Hire Smart People: If you are having trouble hiring top quality technology talent for your company, you definitely need to be at PyCon, handing out your card, and telling everybody what a cool company you work for. Far better use of your time than going through resumes sent to you by your recruiter.
  • Just Rs. 300: Early Bird Registration closes on 1st15th August, so act now. That’s only Rs. 300 for a high quality conference and it includes lunch and snacks for the 3 days of the conference. That’s right, you’ll be paying less than the cost of the food! And, unlike the other, regular tech events that happen in Pune, this is not a cheapo event – there will be swag – T-shirts and other stuff being given away. Did you realize that PyCon sponsors are paying for the privilege of giving you free stuff?
  • Make PyCon Pune the biggest PyCon: Pune now has a reputation to keep up – whenever any tech event that happens in different cities, invariably, the biggest turn-out is for the Pune instance. PHPCamp with 1000+ registrations and 700+ actual attendance is probably the biggest ever tech unconference/barcamp style event in the country. DocType HTML5 in Pune had far more registrations than other places and the organizers had to close registrations. Recently GizmoMeet had their biggest turnout in Pune. The Python community in Pune is far younger than the Python community in Bangalore, so it will be tough for Pune PyCon to beat the Bangalore PyCon, but we definitely need to give them a at least a tough fight.

What are you waiting for? Register now

(We’d like to mention here that amongst the various sponsors of PyCon (including Google and GitHub), are these cool Pune companies/institutions: Venue sponsor: Symbiosis, Gold: Vayana, Silver: Druva and GSLab)