Tag Archives: Events

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.

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?)

TRDDC to invite international experts for seminar on Decentralized and Cooperative Computing

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What: Weeklong seminar on Decentralized and Co-operative Computing, with instruction from international experts
When: Jan 5 to 9, 2009 (but last date to apply is Nov 7, 2008)
Where: TRDDC, Pune
Fees and Registration: It is free, but there is a selection procedure.

Details

TRDDC (Tata Research Development and Design Center), the research wing of TCS is organizing a week-long seminar in Decentralized and Co-operative Computing, with experts from all over the world descending upon Pune in the second week of January, to bring the highest quality education in Computer Science to the most gifted young computer scientists here. The “TCS Excellence in Computer Science (TECS)” Week is an yearly workshop conducted jointly by the International Institute for Software Technology (IIST), United Nations University and Indian Association for Research in Computing Science (IARCS).

Decentralized and Cooperative Computing is the topic for this year’s TECS Week. This course will cover a broad spread of issues, including design of decentralized, cooperative systems that can operate correctly even when individual nodes deviate from their specifications because of failures, errors in software configuration, malicious attacks, or even selfish behavior resulting from nodes attempting to maximize their own utility; design and analysis of peer-to-peer and social networks; as well as challenges in designing protocols for the Internet – a very large decentralized and cooperative computing platform.

Speakers

Please note, if you wish to attend this seminar, you need to apply, and only selected applicants will be invited. Selection is competitive as the number that can be accommodated is limited. The aim is to ensure that those who will benefit most from participation in TECS Week 2008 are selected. Applicants who wish to participate in TECS Week 2009 need to apply at TECS Week 2009 before  7 November 2008.

If you don’t get selected, you can always check out the PuneTech Calendar for other interesting tech events you can attend in Pune.

Contact Information

For further information, contact Rekha Tulsani at TRDDC (+91 20 6608 6265 / 6608 6333; tecs at tcs dot com).

Seminar on Xen Virtual Machine – 20th Oct

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What: Seminar on Xen Virtual Machine architecture and server virtualization
When: Monday, October 20, 2008 from 5:00pm – 7:00pm
Where: Auditorium, Building “C”, Pune IT Park, Bhau Patil Road, Aundh
Fees and Registration: This event is free for all. Register here

KQInfotech presents a seminar on the Xen Virtual Machines. We would present various server virtualization technologies in general. Xen virtual machine architecture will be presented in more detail. That would be followed by comparison of various virtual machine architectures.

This event is free for all.

You would need to register at http://mentor.kqinfotech.com to attend this seminar. Select Xen Virtual machine course from this page, it will take you a login page. Please select a login id for yourself and login. Please fill in the details.

Or you could just RSVP to alka at kqinfotech dot com

As usual, check the PuneTech Calendar for all happening tech events happening in Pune (which, incidentally, is a very happening place). Also, don’t forget to tell your friends about PuneTech, the … ahem … techies’ hub for bonding (as reported by the Pune Mirror yesterday).

POCC Meetup Reminder – Meet Pune Entrepreneurs on 18th Oct

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What: Pune OpenCoffee Club get-together. Startup speed date. Get to know a lot Pune startups/entrepreneurs in a short time.

When: Saturday, 18th October, 4pm – 7pm

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

Registration and Fees: This event is free for everyone, but RSVP unmesh at gmail dot com

Details:

The idea is for POCC members to get to know the city-entrepreneurs better and on the flip side, the entrepreneurs get to practice their elevator-pitch, field biting questions, and maybe find that one person they sorely need on their team. Please note that this is not a hiring event so please leave those resumes behind.

Here’s the format of a Startup-speed-date:
1. All the startups will first give a brief introduction.
2. Startups will occupy tables
3. Folks would get to do a sit-down with the startup for a max of 5 (? tbd) minutes
4. At end of the 5 min round the folks move on to the next table
5. this process continues till all in the room have gotten a chance to meet the ones manning the tables
6. At the end of the event you have a chance to win prizes (no iPods – all startups here) by guessing the startup from quiz questions.

Entrepreneurs signed up so far

1. ThinkingSpace Technologies – http://thinkingspace.in
2. Chroma Systems Pvt Ltd. – http://www.chromasystems.com/
3. Lipikaar – Express yourself in Language – http://www.lipikaar.com/
4. pringOO – express your Individuality – http://www.pringOO.com
5. Shop Online at Laxmi Road – http://www.laxmiroad.in
6. http://www.justmeans.com – News, Jobs, and Networks for people who create change
7. Pay for Performance SEM Solution – http://www.Sokrati.com
8. A Wissen Systems initiative – http://startupforstartups.com/
9. Kaboodle – Social Shopping Network – http://www.kaboodle.com
10. Information Engine (Search Startup) called “42” – http://42.dnsdojo.com/wiki42/42_video.html
11. AI for information access on mobile – http://www.alabot.com/
12. Sales/Marketing services for SME’s – http://www.markonix.com
13. Contextual widgets for your website/blog – http://hover.in
14. Prasanna Walimbe – http://www.virtuaresearch.com/ SaaS for equity research.
15. Parth Pandya – http://www.wissentechnologies.biz Provider of software solutions

…and the list is growing.

If you are an entrepreneur then you should sign up, because letting the community know what you are upto is always a good thing. Just send an email to unmesh at gmail dot com. If you are interested in the startup ecosystem in Pune, you should be there.

The Pune OpenCoffee Club meets on the third Saturday of every month from 4 to 7 pm at SICSR. 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.

Career Guidance Workshop by CSI PUne

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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.

Basic course on Linux by PLUG – Oct 6

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What: A basic course on Linux conducted by Pune Linux Users Group (PLUG)

When: Monday, 6th October. 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
This is a very basic GNU/Linux course. The aim is to provide some hands on experience to the user so as to make him aware of all the different features and flavors of a GNU/Linux OS. At the end of the course, a user should be able to connect to and browse the internet, send receive mails, create rich text documents, spreadsheets, presentations, administer personal system etc. all using a GNU/Linux system and various free software available on the net.

Check out the detailed syllabus for this course.

Pune Linux Users Group Meeting – Oct 4

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What: Pune Linux Users Group (PLUG) monthly meeting

When: Saturday, 4th October. 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. Usually, a PuneJava talk organized by IndicThreads also happens immediately after the PLUG meeting, but apparently not happening this month. 

Symbiosis Institute of Telecom Management (SITM) is organizing a two day seminar on Telecom Management at their beautiful campus at Lavale village. Details of this meeting, and all other interesting tech events in Pune can be found at the PuneTech calendar.

Pune SharePoint Day – 2nd October

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Rizmos Solutions in conjunction with the Pune User Group (which really, really needs to rename itself as the Pune Microsoft Technologies User Group) is hosting a half-day seminar about Microsoft Sharepoint. Both speakers are from Rizmos (technically, eTek which is Rizmos’ parent company), which provides consulting and services in this space. Hopefully, they will talk more about SharePoint and less about their services. 

If you don’t know what SharePoint is, now is a good time to find out:
In computing, the Microsoft SharePoint product sold by Microsoft includes browser-based collaboration and document-management platform. It can be used to host web sites that access shared workspaces and documents, as well as specialized applications like wikis and blogs from a browser. 
It is an important “enterprise 2.0” technology that you should know about.
Details:
Thursday October 2, 2008 from 9:30am – 2:00pm
MCCIA Hall in ICC Convention Center  

ICC Convention Center, Senapati Bapat Marg
Pune, Maharashtra
Category: Education
Website: http://www.puneusergroup.org/websites/puneusergroup/events/s…
09:30 am Reporting
10:00 am Welcome
10.15 am Key note (Mr. Robert Bye)
10.45 am Tea Break
11.00 am Opportunities in sharepoint (Mr.Ameet Phadnis)
01.00 pm Lunch  

For more info about the speakers, see here.

This event is free for all. Register here.

As usual, see the PuneTech calendar for the latest and greatest tech events in Pune. And if you like PuneTech, please email your friends about it.

NASSCOM Product Forum, Pune (Thu, Sept 25)

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What: NASSCOM Product Forum

When: Thursday, 25th September, 10am to 1pm

Where: MCCIA (Hall No.4), A Wing, MCCIA Trade Tower,5th Floor, ICC Complex, Senapati Bapat Road

Fees and Registration: This event is free for all. Please RSVP Paresh Degaonkar at paresh@nasscom.in  or call at 91 9850049251

Details:

The NASSCOM Event at Pune slated on Sept 25, 2008 will unveil “NASSCOM Software Product Study” and the announcement of “NASSCOM INTEL  Product Connect Initiative”.

The NASSCOM Software Product Business Study presents the findings of our latest research effort focused on the Indian software product business environment. It provides a comprehensive review of the Product Business History, market landscape; highlights the key opportunity areas; identifies enablers for growth and suggests some targeted actions that key stakeholders should undertake to enable the next phase of growth for Indian software product businesses.

The “NASSCOM – INTEL Product Connect Initiative” is a collaboration to contribute to the overall software ecosystem by empowering NASSCOM’s member companies (software vendors) to innovate and develop a commercially viable application for businesses or Consumers. Beginning with strategic planning and insights into Intel’s technology roadmaps, the support continues through product development and application enablement, and the cycle is completed by augmenting your marketing campaigns with downloadable marketing resources and access to the Intel® Business Exchange portal – to enable you to reach new customers worldwide, and gain access, on a selective basis, to the investment wing of Intel.

Who should attend:

  • CXOs of Product Companies
  • Incubation Centers
  • Product Managers
  • Product Architects
  • Investing Community
  • Entrepreneurs

To keep in touch with all interesting tech events happening in Pune, check out the PuneTech calendar.