Tag Archives: Events

Java Meet, PLUG meeting, and startup chat – 5 July

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Java

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What: Pune Linux Users Group (PLUG) meeting followed by a Talk on “Contrasting Java and Dynamic Languages” by Dhananjay Nene (as part of the Java meet by IndicThreads.) Also, check out the proto.in online startup chat event at 3pm.

When: Saturday, 5th July. PLUG meeting 4pm to 6pm. Dhananjay’s talk from 6pm to 7:30pm

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. Register here.

Details: PLUG meeting
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.

Details: Contrasting Java and Dynamic Languages
Given the increasing interest in dynamic languages such as Python, Ruby, PHP along with the increasing threat perception to Java, Dhananjay Nene talks about his experience with using these languages and how they distinguish themselves from Java. The session “Contrasting Java and Dynamic Languages” will also discuss the role of Java based scripting languages such as Groovy, JRuby and Jython.

About the Presenter:
Dhananjay Nene has been programming for 17 years and was associated with Citicorp Overseas Software Limited and AT&T and his last assignment was being the CTO and Head of Product Development for CashTech Solutions. He has worked on a number of domains including banking, telecom, network management, wireless networking and educational software. He is an MBA from IIM Ahmedabad, has worked in senior management positions and has managed large sized development teams.

In recent years he had focused on building very high performance java based frameworks and solutions. Currently he is developing software using Python. He blogs at http://blog.dhananjaynene.com

Proto.in’s online startup chat

If you don’t feel like leaving your house, you can check out the proto.in online start-up chat event that starts at 3pm.

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User groups in Pune & meetings this weekend: Java, Linux, Flex, Ruby

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I just added information about four user groups in Pune to the Groups and Organizations page in the PuneTech wiki: PuneRuby, PuneJava, Pune Linux Users Group (PLUG), and Pune Flex Users Group (PuneFUG). Please take a look at their pages to get an idea of their activities. PLUG and PuneJava have regular meetings. PuneRuby and PuneJava have very active mailing lists. PuneFUG is relatively new, but it looks like they will have regular meetings.

PuneJava has a talk on agile development this Saturday at 6pm. (You should already know this; otherwise subscribe to PuneTech updates!) Just before that, at the same location, PLUG is holding its monthly meeting (see their website for details). Pune Flex Users Group is holding a  meeting on Sunday at 5pm (see their wiki for details).

Also, the Pune OpenCoffee Club (for entrepreneurs, and others interested in the startup ecosystem in Pune) is planning on a meeting next weekend. Chip in on that discussion if you want to influence the time/location or agenda.

Update: Rohit points out in the comments that there’s a Pune bloggers lunch on Saturday at 12:30pm.

Agile Development for Java Enterprise Applications – 7 June

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What: Talk on “Agile Development for Java Enterprise Applications” by Prerna Patil from Oracle Financial Services (formerly i-Flex solutions)

When: Saturday, 7th June 2008, 6.00 pm – 7.30 pm
Where: Symbiosis Institute of Computer Studies and Research (SICSR), 7th floor, Atur Center, Model Colony, Pune
* Entry is free of cost. No registration required. Entry on first come first served basis.
This event is an activity of the PuneJava group.

Session Overview : Agile is a way to quickly develop working applications by focusing on progressive requirement rather than processes. Agile development is done in iterative manner with short requirements, quick builds and frequent releases. Agile methodology when compared to traditional practices like waterfall model, makes development easier, faster and adaptive.

The session would provide a roadmap for building enterprise-class Java applications using agile methods. It would include introduction to agile methodology and when and why it should be used. Various practices used for agile development (Agile Modeling, Agile Draw, Agile estimation) would be discussed. Agile development based Case Study would be drawn using: Light weight technologies like Spring; ORM for database handling; Test Driven Development approach; Build management & Configuration control in concurrent development environment. Session would also include coding practices to make code adaptable to new requirements and tips for using IDE (Eclipse & Netbeans) for agile development.

Speaker Bio : Prerana Patil has over 5 years of experience of working with Java and Java Enterprise Applications. She is currently working in Technology Practice group of Oracle Financial Services (formerly i-flex solutions limited). She is a Masters in Computer Science from UOP and loves exploring the new things in software world. She has been involved in various trainings on Java, Java EE.
* For those not in Pune or unable to attend, add your queries in the comments section at http://www.indicthreads.com/news/1228/agile_development_enterprise_java_meet.html and the organizers promise to get them answered at the meet.

CSI-Pune’s ILM Seminar – A Report

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CSI-Pune conducted a half-day workshop on Information Life-cycle management. T.M. Ravi, founder and CEO of Mimosa Systems gave the keynote presentation. There were product/project pitches from IBM, Zmanda, Coriolis. A talk on storage trends by Abhinav Jawadekar. Finally a panel discussion with representation from Symantec (V. Ganesh), BMC (Bladelogic; Monish Darda), Zmanda (K K George), IBM, Symphony (Surya Narayanan), and nFactorial (Hemant Joshi).

Here are my cryptic notes from the conference:

  • T.M. Ravi, CEO of Mimosa, gave talk on what he sees as challenges in storage/ILM. New requirements coming from the customers – Huge amounts of user-generated unstructured data in enterprises. Must manage it properly for legal, security and business reasons. Interesting new trends coming from the technology side – new/cheap disks. De-duplication. Storage intensive apps (eg. video). Flash storage. Green storage (i.e. energy conscious storage). SaaS and storage in the cloud (e.g. Amazon S3). Based on this, storage software should focus on these things: 1. Increase Information content of data 2. Improve security. 3. Reduce legal risk. Now he segues into a pitch for Mimosa’s products. i.e. You must have an enterprise-wide archive: 1. continuous capture (i.e. store all versions of the data). 2. Full text indexing of all the content and allow users to search by keyword. 3. Single instance storage (SIS) aka De-duplication, to reduce the storage requirements. 4. Retention policies. Mimosa is an archiving appliance that can be used for 1. ediscovery, 2. recovery, 3. end-user searches, 4. storage cost reduction.
  • Then there was a presentation from IBM on General Parallel File System (GPFS). Parallel, highly available distributed file system. I did not really understand how this is significantly different from all the other such products already out there. Also, I am not sure what part of this work is being done in Pune. Caching of files over WAN in GPFS (to improve performance when it is being accessed from a remote location) is being developed here (Ujjwal Lanjewar).
  • There was also a presentation on the SAN simulator tool. This is something that allows you to simulate a storage area network, including switches and disk arrays. It has been open-sourced and can be downloaded here. A lot of the work for this tool happens in Pune (Pallavi Galgali).
  • KKG from Zmanda demonstrating recovery manager for MySQL. This whole product has been architected and developed in Pune
  • Bernali from Coriolis demonstrated CoLaMa – a virtual machine lifecycle manager a virtual machine lifecycle manager. This is essentially CVS for virtual machine images. A version management software to keep track of all your VM images. Check out image. Work on it. Check it in. A new version gets stored in the repository. And it only stores the differences between the image – so space savings. It auto-extracts info like OS info, patchlevel etc.
  • Coriolis’ was the only live demo. The others were flash demos which looked lame (and had audio problems). Suggestion to all – if you are going to give a flash demo, at least turn off the audio and do the talking yourself. This would involve the audience much better.
  • Abhinav Jawadekar gave nice introductory talk on the various interesting technologies and trends in storage. It would have been very useful and helpful for someone new to the field. However, in this case, I think it was wasted on audience most of who’ve been doing this for 5+ years. The only new stuff was in the last few slides that were about energy aware storage (aka green storage). (For example, he pointed out that data-center class storage in Pune is very expensive due to the high storage costs – due to power, cooling, UPS, genset, the operating costs of a 42U rack are $800 to $900 per month.)
  • The panel discussion touched upon a number of topics, not all of them interesting. I did not really capture notes of that.

Overall, it was an interesting evening. With about 50 people attending, the turnout was a little lower than I expected. I’m not sure what needs to be done in Pune to get people to attend. If you have suggestions, let me know. If you are interested in getting in touch with any of the people mentioned above, let me know, and I can connect you.

WiCamp – “From Ideas to Dollars” barcamp – 30 May

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What: WiCamp is a barcamp with the theme “From Ideas to Dollars”, organized by Wipro Technologies. BarCamps are un-conference like meetings. Here like minded people come over and share their learning on a topic of mutual interest through presentation, demos, videos, etc.

When: Friday, 30th May, 2pm to 7pm

Where: Wipro Technologies, Platinum Training hall, Tower-3, Lower Ground, Phase- I, MIDC, Rajiv Gandhi Infotech Park, Hinjwadi, Pune

Who can attend: This event is open to all. There are no fees. Please register at the WiCamp website.

Themes for WiCamp:

  • How firms arrive at value proposition for an innovation
  • Partnering to take ideas faster to market
  • Open Innovation
  • Measuring returns on innovation
  • Shrinking the time to market
  • Increasing hit-rate of ideas
  • Managing teams for innovation
  • Personal creativity to organizational creativity

More than the actual presentations given what I like about a barcamp is the people you meet in the corridors, and the enthusiasm and energy levels. You should definitely attend if you’ve never attended a barcamp before. For details, see the WiCamp wiki, which will keep getting updated until the last day.

CSI-Pune Seminar on Information Lifecycle Management – 29 May

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What: Seminar on Information Lifecycle Management. ILM consists all the technologies required during the lifetime of some data stored in an enterprise. How data comes in, where it is stored, the storage hardware/software and architecture, how it is archived and backed up, retention policies, and deletion policies.

When: Thursday, 29 May 2008, 4pm to 9pm

Where: National Insurance Academy 25,Balewadi, Baner Road

Fees: Rs. 400 for CSI members, Rs. 500 for others

Registration: register online

Detailed Program:

3:30 pm – 4:00 pm : Registration

4:00 pm – 4:15 pm : Inauguration and release of CSI Newsletter

4:15 pm – 5:15 pm : Keynote address – T. M. Ravi (President and CEO Mimosa Systems)

5:15 pm – 5:45 pm : Tea Break

5:45 pm – 6:45 pm
Demonstration of products – IBM, Zmanda Technologies, Coriolis

6:45 pm – 7:30 pm
Technical talk – Most promising new technologies in Storage and ILM space by by Abhinav Jawadekar – Founder, Sound Paradigm, Software Engineering Services.

7:30 pm – 8:15 pm
Panel discussion – Technology Trends in Storage and its correlation with Career Opportunities . Panelists are Surya Narayanan (Symphony), K K George (Zmanda Technologies), Monish Darda (Bladelogic), Bhushan Pandit (Nes technologies), V. Ganesh (Symantec). Moderated by Hemant Joshi (nFactorial Software)

8:15 pm onwards: Dinner

The event is open to everybody, but you have to register online. Fees are Rs. 400 for members, Rs. 500 for non-members.

IdeaCampPune – a Report

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These are the quick-n-dirty notes that I took during IdeaCampPune. (Actually, they are my live-tweets of the event.) I’ve tried to include relevant links where I could find them.

Generally, I think it went rather well. The organizers had stopped registration after 80 entries (there were a bunch of other people who wanted to get in, but couldn’t) – so I guess about 80 people attended. All the sessions were attended by a roomful of people and many sessions had lots of discussion and audience participation.

If you find any one of these initiatives interesting, and need help with getting in touch with the relevant person, let me know and I can try to put you in touch.

Notes:

  • First hour spent in “corridor discussions”. About a dozen ideas listed on the board so far.
  • Kaushik R (http://lin.cr/ru) et al trying to create a platform for structured participation of Industry in (Pune) colleges
  • IIT-B Alumni association inviting nominations for Innovations-2009 (http://innovations-pune.com/). I’ve heard good things about the Innovations program from a number of people. (Beware, it is not all IT/Tech, some of the innovations might be in a different field. But still interesting.)
  • Srikanth Sunderarajan (COO, Persistent) pushing people to be serious about their ideas – to think everything through.
  • Anupam Saraph, CIO of Pune, talking about “Design for Pune” (http://lin.cr/rv) – competition/game to design Pune of the future. Competition will have participants using SimCity (http://lin.cr/rw). Possible first prize – spend a day with Will Wright (top game designer). See my recent article about some of the initiatives that Anupam is currently spending his time on. 
  • Abhay Shete (http://lin.cr/s1) talking about the Semantic Web (http://lin.cr/ry); faceted browsing (http://lin.cr/rz) 
  • A couple of students from COEP talking about Swarm Intelligence (http://lin.cr/s2). Complex behavior from simple pieces.
  • Anurag Agarwal is creating the “Mentor India Program”. Pick promising students from colleges and mentor them for a few years.
  • Shashikant Kore (http://lin.cr/s3) talking about SMS based micropayments. I wonder if his new company (still in stealth) is about this
  • The Design for Pune (http://lin.cr/rv) presentation repeated by popular demand (for those who missed it)
  • Aparna talking about “India, I Care” http://lin.cr/s5 – Lots of audience participation
  • Entrepreneurship cell IIT-B; promoting entrepreneurship amongst youth. http://genportal.org/ – funding, incubation, showcase, etc.
  • Freeman, talking about the use of mp3 players in (rural?) education (the “one mp3 player per child” project). http://clrindia.net/ is using radio to run an english teaching program. Digital Hall provides videos that teachers can use to run lessons. Teacher only has to answer questions/doubts. OLPC classroom near Karjat is also rather cool. Also see http://curriki.org/ a wikipedia for curricula. All of these have some problems. That’s where mp3pc comes in. The web has a large amount of audio web content that is freely downloadable. Usable for education. use cheap chinese mp3 players for education! Easy to use, cheap, sturdy, easy to carry around. Many hours of education. Can use even while the child is doing something else (e.g. walking 5km to school). Freeman is hoping to do a pilot program with the 15 mp3 players he bought. Looking for a good institute where to run it. 
  • Aditi talking about “Generating Rural Income”. Can we tap traditional abilities of villagers/tribals to generate income? A number of interesting NGOs were mentioned during this talk, but I was unable to capture their names. Hopefully someone will blog about this in more detail.
  • Shyamal leads a discussion on various ways of saving power (mainly about our use of computers)
  • My own discussion on what we can do to improve participation in tech community events in Pune. Some interesting ideas that I hope to try out in the near future
  • Guna talking about “Lean Thinking”. The Toyota way. How to incorporate lean thinking in your own startup. Identify waste, measure it, and eliminate it.
  • One presentation on a single website where you can go to see all your e-mail. Everybody jumped on the poor guy. Surprisingly, in a day full of unconferenced talks, this was the only presentation that did not have interesting content.
  • bosky101 conducting a session on brainstorming. Creating random patterns of different ideas. Everybody having fun coming up with unrelated terms/areas/activities. 
  • Since a lot of the ideas presented today have been about social responsibility, Anurag felt that the audience would be interested in the other activity that he has been a part of for the last year.  http://aksharbharati.org – the program he started for creating libraries for disadvantaged kids. They have created 50 libraries so far (using, 40 to 50 people across 5 chapters). He hopes to double the numbers this year.
  • There was a wrap up session in the end where people talked about which ideas they liked the best. Design for Pune was the clearly one the ideas that people were most excited about. Other honourable mentions: SMS micropayments, Mentor India, 1MP3PC.

Reminder – Jason Goldberg talk Today, IdeaCampPune on Saturday

Events

Events this week:

Jason Goldberg, Founder and CEO of social|median will be giving a talk today (Monday) at 6:30pm, at True Sparrow Systems office (near E-Square). For more details, see the event announcement. You can also try out social|median (click on “create an account” and use invitation code “punetech”).

IdeaCampPune is this Saturday. Registration is free, but compulsory, if you wish to attend. You can register by clicking on the “Edit Page” link at the the top of that page. Use “c4mp” as the “Wiki Password / Invite key”.

Related Post: PMC vision for the future needs your help

PMI-Pune Seminar: “Learning from Diving Sports” and “Pune Transport System Case Study”

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PMI Pune Deccan-India Chapter is pleased to invite you for interesting and thought provoking seminars on:

Management tips: Learning from diving sports/projects by Mr. Michael Waldbrenner

and

 Infrastructure Project Management: Case Study – Pune Public Transport System by Mr. Shirish Kanitkar

Venue: Cummins Auditorium, Pune Shramik Patrakar Sangh, 193 Navi Peth, Ganjwe Chowk, Near Alka Talkies, Garware bridge & S. M. Joshi hall, Pune 411030. Reception (Tel) – +91(20) 24334190

Date: Saturday, May 10, 2008

Time: 10:00 am to 12:30 pm

Topic 1:  Management: Learning from diving sports/projects

Michael is going to talk about how the experiences from sports can be applied in management as well. He would present examples in context of scuba diving about how the principals applied in sports can be equally applied for Project management. Michael’s hobbies are sailing and scuba diving, especially scuba diving in water filled caves. This hobby might be considered dangerous but if planned and executed properly it would be equally interesting. There are a lot of similarities to current IT projects. Both are “mission critical”, you can plan them well but you can not cope with all risks attached. Michael will talk about how can we compare the planning and execution of international extreme cave diving projects with international software projects and what can we learn from that?

Speaker: Mr. Michael Waldbrenner

Mr. Michael Waldbrenner – Director, Global Sourcing Healthcare & Welfare India, TietoEnator Software Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

Before Michael finished school (Germany) he already has started his own business together with his twin brother Andreas. They sold PC hardware at that time and installed computer networks in big companies. Also they both gave training in multiple programming languages. In 1993 the company was then converted into a GmbH (private limited) and Michael was one of the managing directors. The focus moved more and more to software development for Logistics companies, banks and travel agencies. 1994 there was a big change in the German healthcare system and therefore the idea to develop a hospital information system was established. In 1999 the Private Limited was converted into a stock based company. Michael was then made the CFO of that company. The revenue at that time was around 2,5Mio EUR supporting around 60 hospitals with the Hospital information system, which contained 84 Modules at that time. In 2005 the business got merged with TietoEnator – IT-Company with 17,000 people in 23 countries.

Topic 2:  Infrastructure Project Management: Case Study – Pune Public Transport System

Increasing traffic in a city leads to problems of congestion, pollution, and road safety and in general a decreasing quality of life through decreasing open spaces etc. However, just building more infrastructures such as roads, flyovers and tunnels to accommodate the increasing number of vehicles cannot solve this problem. In fact, this only makes the problem worse as even more vehicles try to occupy the same space making increasing congestion, pollution and accident rates. The only sustainable solution to addressing the problem – something recognized the world over now – is to have a strong public transport system that is attractive to all sections of society and to provide support for non-motorized transport such as walking and cycling. For Pune, this translates into drastically improving the services provided by PMT, planning and implementing city-wide footpath and cycle networks, planning and implementing a city-wide Bus Rapid Transit system, and undertaking a techno-economic feasibility study of options such as a metro.

Speakers: Mr. Shirish Kanitkar, Mr. Sujit Patwardhan & Mr. Ashok Sreenivas

Mr. Shirish Kanitkar, Mr. Sujit Patwardhan & Mr. Ashok Sreenivas are active members of PTTF (Pune Traffic & Transportation Forum http://www.pttf.net/). PTTF is a cross-platform NGO for sustainable transportation policy whose vision is “Sustainable, affordable, safe and eco-friendly mobility for all”. This group is working on Pune city’s alarmingly deteriorating traffic situation and the activists are trying to address this issue for about 4-5 years now. The group has spent a lot of time and energy in PTTF activities in trying to further the cause of sustainable traffic and transportation in Pune and made significant impact on local bodies.

Note:

  1. Monthly seminar is FREE FOR ALL / NO Entry FEE; one does not have to be Deccan Chapter member to attend this seminar.
  2. Practicing PMPs can earn 1 to 2 PDUs (Professional Development Units) by attending this seminar.
  3. Please share this information with other interested / your friends, they need not to be Deccan Chapter member.
  4. Practicing PMPs can earn 1 to 2 PDUs by attending seminar.
  5. Non paid members may subscribe to On Target Newsletter by paying marginal amount of Rs. 100/- Annually. All payments must be paid in advance. Checks payable to: “PMI Pune-Deccan India Chapter”, Payable at: Pune, India. You may bring the check on seminar day and handover to Sangeeta Zaparde (Finance Director) OR Omkar Gurjar (Marketing & Communications Director). Please write your Name, eMail ID & Date of Subscription backside of the check.

To subscribe to PMI Pune-Deccan India Chapter:

1) Visit http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/pmi-pune-chapter and click on – Join this group! button.

2) Send mail to pmi-pune-chapter-owner@yahoogroups.com with following information

Name, Personal   Email, Home Phone, Mobile No, Company Name, Work Email, Work Phone, Designation, PMI Member (paid $119)? Deccan Chapter Member (paid $10)?

3) Chapter website: www.pmipunechapter.org

Thanks & Regards,
Omkar Gurjar, PMP
Marketing & Communications Director
PMI Pune-Deccan India Chapter

Talk by Jason Goldberg Founder+CEO social|median & ex-Founder+CEO Jobster – 12 May

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Jason Goldberg Headshot

Serial entrepreneur, Jason Goldberg, who founded and headed Jobster, and who is now on to his next startup, social|median, a social news website, will share his past experiences as an entrepreneur and then Jason and Nishith Shah, CEO of True Sparrow Systems will talk about their experience in working on social|median development with Jason in New York and the team in Pune.

When: Monday, 12th May, 6:30pm
Where: True Sparrow Systems office, near e-Square
Detailed Location: See http://www.truesparrow.com/location

About the Speaker

Mr. Goldberg is the founder and CEO of socialmedian, a social news service that connects people with personalized news and information. Founded in January 2008, socialmedian is currently in alpha stage.

Previously, Mr. Goldberg founded Jobster, where he served as CEO from 2004 to 2007. Mr. Goldberg is currently Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors at Jobster.

Prior to founding Jobster, Mr. Goldberg launched and helped run several new products and services for T-Mobile and AOL.

Mr. Goldberg has a Masters in Business Administration (MBA) from Stanford University and a BA from Emory University with honors and Phi Beta Kappa distinction.

From 1991 to 1998, Mr. Goldberg spent most of his twenties working for President Bill Clinton, first on the 1992 Presidential campaign and then in the White House from 1993 to 1998. At the White House, Mr. Goldberg job was to help keeping the trains running on time.

About social|median

See the PuneTech wiki profile on social|median for more information and links. social|median is currently in an invite-only alpha – however, special invitations have been opened up for PuneTech readers. Use invitation code “punetech” at the social|median sign-up page.