Tag Archives: Events

ACM India Annual Event – at Pune, 25 Jan

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This year, The Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) (one of the top associations of computer science academics and professionals), will hold its annual India event on 25th January, in Pune with the help of ACM Pune, the local chapter. The event will be at the ‘O’ Hotel, Koregaon Park, Pune, from 9:30am to 5:30pm. This annual meet is attended by ACM Turing Award winners, ACM Office Bearers, ACM India members, and Researchers.

Note: this event is different from the ACM Compute 2012 Conference, which is also being organised by ACM Pune, in Pune, on 23/24 Jan.

Agenda for the Event

  • 0930 Welcome Alain Chesnais, John White, Anand Deshpande
  • 1000 Keynote by N R Narayana Murthy, Infosys
  • 1100 Tea break
  • 1130 Talk by Frans Kaashoek, MIT
  • 1220 Ramesh Mengawade, Opus Software
  • 1300 Lunch
  • 1400 Talk by Ravi Kannan, Microsoft Research
  • 1450 Talk by Wendy Hall, University of Southampton
  • 1540 Tea break
  • 1600 Capstone talk by Narendra Jadhav, Planning Commision
  • 1700 Concluding session, Vote of Thanks, Anand Deshpande, P J Narayanan
  • 1730 Closing

About ACM Pune

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is the world’s largest educational and scientific computing society for the Computer Science/IT community, delivering resources that advance computing as a science and a profession for the past 70 years. The ACM India council was formed 2 years ago with a mandate of playing an active role in the science and profession of computing, with a special emphasis on India.

ACM Pune is the Pune chapter of ACM.

Fees and Registration

This event open for anybody to attend – the fees are Rs. 300 for ACM members and Rs. 800 for non-members. Please register here

ACM Compute 2012 academic conference in Pune – 23/24 Jan

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ACM Pune, the local chapter of the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) one of the top associations of computer science academics and professionals, is holding Compute 2012, the first edition of its annual conference, on 23 and 24 January 2012. The theme for this conference is Intelligent and Scalable Computing Systems. Prof. R. K. Shyamsunder, TIFR, Mumbai and Dr. Lokendra Shastri, Infosys Ltd are general co-chairs for COMPUTE 2012.

Agenda

Keynote speakers:

  • Dr. Ajay Bhushan Pandey, Deputy Director General of Unique Identity Authority of India (UIDAI)
  • Dr. Pushpak Bhattacharyya, Professor, Dept. of Computer Science & Engineering, IIT-Bombay

Other speakers include Dr Aditya Abhyankar, HoD, Department of Technology, Pune University, IITB, Dr Deepak Khemani, Professor IIT Mandi, Dr Abhay Jere, Persistent Systems Ltd, and Dr Girish Palshikar, Tata Research Design and Development Centre.

These are the papers that have been selected for presentation at Compute 2012:

  • Scalable Lock-Free FIFO Queues using Efficient Elimination Techniques
  • A Robust Neural Network Classifier to Model the Compressive Strength of High Performance Concrete Using Feature Selection
  • Mining Research Abstracts for Exploration of Research Communities
  • A Generic Topology Discovery Approach for Huge Social Networks
  • Multimodal Biometric System Based on Hand geometry, Palmprint and Signature
  • A Review of Path Planning and Mapping Technologies for Autonomous Mobile Robot Systems
  • A Knowledge-based Formalization of UBL Processes using Hybrid programs
  • GPU implementation of a novel hybrid lattice Boltzmann method for non-isothermal flows
  • Texture Edge Statistics for Efficient Retrieval of Biomedical Images Recognition and Classifier
  • Enabling High Performance Computing using Microsoft HPC Server
  • RobExT: A tool to customize microarray data for Cell Designer and Cytoscape
  • FIRA – A novel method for benchmarking the cache hierarchy.
  • Insertion and Querying Mechanism For A Distributed XML Database System
  • Parallel Algorithm to Evaluate Contextual Features for Term Weighting
  • Reconstructing the Software Environment of an Experiment with Kameleon

For selected posters, the program committee, and other details of the conference, see the conference website

Registration and Fees

The conference is open to anybody. Fees are Rs. 3500(2500) for professionals, Rs. 2500(2000) for academics, and Rs. 2000(1500) for students. (Numbers in parenthesis indicate rates for ACM Members). Register here.

The conference will be at YASHADA, on Baner Road, near University Circle.

Demo Space for Pune Startups

ACM Pune also invites technology startups in Pune to exhibit their products to the ACM audience for a fee of Rs. 5000 for one day. Selected startups will be provided with one table and a standee for the exhibition. This is a chance for a startup to reach out to a very select audience of computer science professionals from all over the country. For more details, watch for an announcement on the Pune Startups mailing list.

About ACM Pune

The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is the world’s largest educational and scientific computing society for the Computer Science/IT community, delivering resources that advance computing as a science and a profession for the past 70 years. The ACM India council was formed 2 years ago with a mandate of playing an active role in the science and profession of computing, with a special emphasis on India.

ACM Pune is the Pune chapter of ACM.

JSFoo/HasGeek’s JavaScript HackNight Pune – Jan 14

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No matter what programming language and platform you work on today, it is almost certain that at least one of the user interfaces to your software product/service is written using JavaScript. JavaScript is easily the language that is available on far, far more computing devices in the world than any other language, considering it is present by default on all desktop browsers and most mobile phone browsers. Thus, if your in the software space, is no alternative but to accept JavaScript – it is the default.

A JavaScript hack night – i.e. a night of hacking on JavaScript with 30 others from Pune and elsewhere in India has been organized on Saturday, 14th January, at AmiWorks office (SB Road, Pune), in conjunction with the [JSFoo] JavaScript in conference which will also be held in Pune a week later. (To clarify, the JavaScript Hacknight is on 14th Jan, night, and the [JSFoo] conference is on 21st January, daytime.)

The hacknight is open for any registered participant of the [JSFoo] conference, but since space is limited at the venue, you will need to register separately for it. All you need to do is get your laptop, and get ready for lots of JavaScript programming, learning, and discussions. To get an idea of what a JSFoo hacknight is like, check out these videos from JSFoo Hacknight Bangalore.

TechMarathi Mahamelava: Technology in Marathi for Beginners and Professionals – 7/8 Jan

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To see the information of this article in Marathi, click here

There is a large chunk of people in Pune in particular and Maharashtra in general who are being left behind in the internet revolution primarily because they are not as comfortable in English as they would like to be, and most of the information on the internet is in English. This affects young engineering students and professionals, who are now studying in English, and understand English, but lack the confidence of speaking and writing in English, and find reading English to be a bit strenuous. This also affects beginners, not on the software/IT field, who would like to pick up internet skills, understand email, Facebook, Twitter but for whom English is not the first language.

To bridge the gap between internet and these people [TechMarathi] was formed a few years ago by a group of enthusiastic professionals in Pune who felt that writing technical articles in Marathi, or translating the best-of-the-web articles from English to Marathi would provide a useful service. This is what the [TechMarathi] website has been doing for a while.

Now, TechMarathi has organized the first ever 2-day TechMarathi conference on 7th and 8th January, at SICSR, Model Colony.

The event will span 2 days and will have two parallel tracks – one for beginners and another for professionals. The beginners track targeting absolute beginners will feature talks like: Introduction to the Internet, How to Email/Chat, Typing in Marathi, MS Office, and Blogging. The other track, for professionals, will feature tracks like: Using Social Media like Twitter/Facebook, Differences Between Student Programmers and Professional Programmers, Mobile Software Development, Cloud Computing, Web Mashups. The second day of the conference will feature a workshop on creating websites in Marathi, and a workshop on the Marathi Wikipedia, followed by a talk and awards ceremony with Chief Guest Atul Kahate. See the detailed agenda for more. The event has a nominal entry fee of Rs. 100, which can be paid online, or in person at Rasik Sahitya, 683 Budhwar Peth, or “Akashdhara”, Near Aacharya Atre Sabhagruha, Bajiroa Road, Pune.

If you know someone who can benefit from this event, please forward this information to them. If you feel passionately about this activity in general, please make it a point to come for the event and brainstorm with other like-minded people on what more can be done. For more information in Marathi see the MahaMelava website. Register now

Details:

What: TechMarathi MahaMelava – For Professionals & Beginners
When: 7 and 8 January, (Sat & Sun), 9:30am-6pm
Where: Symbiosis Institute of Computer Studies and Research (SICSR), near Om Market, Model Colony, 7th Floor
Registration: Rs. 100, register now

SEAP Book Club Meeting Report: Crucial Conversations

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(Warning: this is a live-blog of the presentation, written while the event was going on. So it might have errors, might not be as well organized as an article ought to be, and I might have misrepresented the speaker. Please keep that in mind while reading.)

The Software Exporters Association of Pune (SEAP) has a book club which meets on the first Saturday of every month where one of the members presents a summary of a pre-selected book. Since the members and the presenter are usually senior managers in Pune’s IT companies, the books chosen are usually management books.

The book Crucial Conversations was presented by Nitin Deshpande, President of Allscripts India (a medical software products company with 1000+ people in Pune)

  • This book, when you’re reading it, seems like common sense. But it is not. There are lots of anecdotes that will teach you interesting things
  • After you read this book (or a book), you cannot put all of the concepts into practice all at once. Instead, you should pick just one area where you want to improve, and then just focus on it. Don’t do too much at once.
  • A crucial conversation is a conversation you have with someone which transforms a relationship, and creates a new level of bonding. This is not a conversation for someone trying to be popular – a politician. This is not a conversation where you agree with everything the other says.
  • A crucial conversation between two people with differing opinions, and where the stakes are high, and emotions run strong. You have to tackle tough issues, and the result can have a huge impact on your quality of life.

  • Anecdote: people with life-threatening diseases were broken up into two groups, and the authors taught crucial conversations’ techniques to one of the groups in 6 sessions. At the end of one year, only 9% of this group had succumbed to the disease, while 30% of the other group had died.

  • Right motive:

    • Start a high-risk conversation with the right motive, and stay focused on that motive no matter what happens.
    • Work on ME first:
      • Often you are not clear on what you really want.
      • It is easy to fall into incorrect motivations
      • Wanting to win (no, that’s not really what you want)
      • Seeking revenge (no, that’s not what you want either)
      • Often, these desires are sub-conscious
    • Refuse to accept the suckers choice – that there are only two ugly options
      • i.e. “I can honest OR I have to lie”
      • Search for more possibilities
      • Identify what you really want, and what you don’t want. If you do this properly, and combine these two, you can think of many other possibilities
  • Safety: Have a conversation when both feel safe
    • If you feel safe, you can say anything. If you don’t feel safe, you start to go blind
    • Safety is an important requirement for a crucial conversation
      • Check the conditions/context around the conversation, not just the content
      • Learn to view silence and violence as signs that the other person is not feeling safe
        • Silence: Avoiding, withdrawing. Or even sarcasm and sugar-coating.
        • Violence: Controlling, labelling (e.g. “Fascist’), verbal attacking
      • Figure out what is your style. Do you fall into silence or violence when you’re under stress
      • Example: at a performance appraisal, an employee feels unsafe. So that’s not the right place for a crucial conversation. Give feedback earlier, as soon as possible
    • How to Make it Safe
      • Lack of safety comes from risk of loss of mutual purpose, or risk of loss of mutual respect
      • If either is at risk, then to fix it, do one of these:
        • Apologize when necessary
        • Contrast to fix misunderstanding
          • This is not the same as an apology
          • Here you explain what you did not mean, and contrast that with what you meant. This acts as first aid to restore safety
      • Make sure that there is a mutual purpose
        • Commit to seek a mutual purpose
        • Recognize the purpose behind the strategy
        • Invent a mutual purpose if no mutual purpose can be discovered
        • Brainstorm on strategies (what you’re going to do) once mutual purpose is established
    • Master your Emotions
      • Emotions don’t just happen – you create them
      • Something external happens. You react to that. Then you get an emotion. In other words: when something external happens, your brain tells you a story related to that event, and then you get an emotion.
      • To fix the emotion, fix the story.
      • Figure out what story you told yourself:
        • Notice your behavior: silence or violence
        • Don’t confuse the story with facts
        • Watch for three clever stories:
          • Victim: It’s not my fault
          • Villain: It’s all your fault
          • Helpless: There’s nothing I can do
        • e.g. Wife finds a credit card receipt for a nearby motel for husband’s card. Story she tells herself he went there with someone. Then blows up at him.
      • Complete the story
        • Turn yourself from victim to actor (“Could I be contributing to it?”)
        • Turn others from villains to humans (“Why would a normal person do this?”
        • Turn yourself from helpless into able (“What can I do now?”)
  • Listen
    • Listen sincerely to others’ facts+stories
      • Be curious, even if the other person is furious. Be patient
    • When someone is not talking, use AMPP
      • Ask to get things rolling (What’s going on?)
      • Mirror to confirm feelings (You say your OK, but you seem angry)
      • Paraphrase what you’ve understood
      • Prime the pump – start guessing when all else fails
    • Remember your ABC: agree when you agree, build if incomplete, compare when you differ
  • Action
    • Dialog is not decision making
    • Figure out how decisions will be taken: Command, Consult, Vote, Consensus
    • Common mistakes:
      • In case of “command”: don’t pass orders like candy. Explain why.
      • Don’t just pretend to consult. Really do it. Announce what you’re doing. Report the final decision
      • Know when a vote is needed.
    • Action: figure out who, what, when and follow-up
    • Document your work

Audience Discussion

  • Question: What if one person feels that the conversation is crucial, but the other does not? Example: I feel a conversation is crucial, but boss does not. Should we treat all conversations as crucial?
    • Audience Reactions: 1. You can’t treat every conversation as crucial, otherwise you’ll get tired. 2. A boss just has to get used to the fact that every conversation with a subordinate is crucial. 3. If the other person’s emotions are not running high (i.e. s/he does not see it as crucial), that’s actually a good thing, since things will not blow up.
  • Question: This seems like too much to learn and digest. How would you pick what are the first things to take away from here. Related: When I read books like this, I remember only 10%. How do you pick up more?
    • Audience Reactions: 1. When you read something like this, keep track of what you already know, what you’re already good at, and what are the areas where you need to improve, and pick only those to work on. 2. Don’t just read the book. Sign up to present it to someone – that way you’ll learn much more.

(The SEAP Book Club meets on the first Saturday of every month at Sungard, Aundh. If you’re interested in joining, contact Saheli Daswani saheli.daswani@softexpune.org)

Win 3 free passes to ClubHack via Online Capture-The-Flag Hacking Contest

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ClubHack is one of India’s foremost conferences on Security, and this weekend Pune will play host to the 5th ClubHack conference. Richard Stiennon is the keynote speaker, and look here for the complete agenda.

ClubHack has now announced an online “Capture-the-Flag” hacking contest, and the first three contestants to capture the flag get a free ticket to the conference. (If you’ve already bought a ticket, you can still participate, and transfer your winning ticket to a friend.)

More details of the contest are here.

Very high-powered India/US education conference in Pune – Dec 5-7

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From 5 to 8 December, Pune will play host to a very high powered conference on education, featuring some of the top names in education from India and US. And by top names, I really mean the top: everyone’s listed as speakers and panelists, from ministers (Sharad Pawar, Vilasrao Deshmukh, Sushilkumar Shinde, and others), Governors, bureaucrats (from planning commission, AICTE, UGC), heads of various universities and colleges too numerous to mention (including Kadam, DY Patil, Navale, Karad, Mujumdar – all the big names in Maharashtra’s higher education), and a whole lot of others.

From the US there are members of congress and senators, top officials from Princeton, UC Berkeley, and a bunch of other universities. Just look at the detailed agenda for a full list. This is the first time this conference is being organized, so there is no track record, and I don’t know whether all the listed speakers will indeed show up, or there will be bunches of last minute cancellations, but even if a fraction of them show up, it will still be one of the most impressive collection of movers and shakers in the higher education space. Just look at the delegation coming from the US

The conference is organized by three organizations: Alliance for US India Business (AUSIB), State Legislative Leaders Foundation (SLLF), and Dr. D Y Patil University.

For more details, see the AUSIB website.

You can register for the conference here. It costs Rs. 5000 per person.

IPMA Event: Leveraging Social Media for Market Research – 3 Dec

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The next meetup of the Indian Product Managers Association (IPMA), Pune, will feature a talk on Leveraging Social Media as a Market Research Tool (as opposed to outbound marketing), by Pinkesh Shah, Founder and CEO at Adaptive Marketing. The event is on Saturday, 3rd December.

About the Speaker – Pinkesh Shah

Pinkesh Shah, is a Silicon Valley Executive who has been a Product Management Practitioner for the last 14 years in US. Most recently he was the global Vice President of Product Management at McAfee (now acquired by Intel). Having played a key role in understanding how global products have to be adapted to work in emerging markets, he also started the product management organization in McAfee India.

Before McAfee he had several senior management roles in product companies like IBM, netIQ and have launched new products in the high technology space in startups like Netrex and Captivo.

Shah is a gold medalist from M.S.University where he earned his Bachelors in Engineering in Computer Science and a UPE research scholar at Purdue University where he earned his Masters in Computer Science.

Shah started Adaptive marketing with a vision to create the next generation product managers and marketers in India to enable technology product and services companies to market their product globally. He is part of the Angel network which invests in early stage technology companies.

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

Code Retreat Pune – Day Long Programming Event

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Pune is participating in the Global Code Retreat day 2011. It’s a day-long programming event based on principles of good design. Its on Dec 3, from 9am to 6pm at Thoughtworks, Pune. The event is free but has a Rs. 200 deposit which will be refunded if you actually attend the event (to prevent people from registering if they’re not serious).

You only need to bring a laptop with the development tools you require to write code using your chosen programming languages. A breakfast and lunch will be provided.

Please spread the word amongst other developers and mailing lists.

This event is hosted by ITT (Innovation Technology Trust) and co-sponsored by ThoughtWorks and C42 Engineering. If you have any problems registering, or have any other questions, contact niranjan@c42.in

What is a Code Retreat?

Coderetreat is a day-long, intensive practice event, focusing on the fundamentals of software development and design. By providing developers the opportunity to take part in focused practice, away from the pressures of ‘getting things done’, the coderetreat format has proven itself to be a highly effective means of skill improvement. Practicing the basic principles of modular and object-oriented design, developers can improve their ability to write code that minimizes the cost of change over time.

This is a language-agnostic event. Each session, the pair chooses what language they want to work in. So, no matter what your language of choice, you are welcome. We practice the fundamentals: TDD and the 4 rules of simple design – these are applicable regardless of language.

The idea of day long practice sessions for programmers was formalized by Corey Haines. Read more on his blog about How does Code Retreat work?

Do read this blog post by Corey as well.

This 3:21minute video from Code Retreat Orlando is another wicked cool introduction!

What’s the deal with the Rs. 200 registration deposit?

CodeRetreat is a free event paid for by sponsors. For larger events, though, it is important to have an accurate view of attendance. This helps us purchase the right amount of food, snacks, etc. If people register, but don’t show up and don’t cancel, then we waste a lot of food, as well as have to turn some people away that want to come. To this end, we are asking for a Rs. 200 deposit to hold your space.

The Rs. 200 will be refunded to you at the event. Don’t worry, though, you may cancel your registration and get a refund up to 7 days before the event. If you want to transfer your registration to someone else, we can do that, too.

Fees and Registration

This event is open to anybody and has a Rs. 200 refundable deposit. Please register here

Location: ThoughtWorks Technologies, GF-01 and MZ-01, Tower C, Panchshil Tech Park, Yerwada. December 3, 9am – 6pm.

Get a 25%+ PuneTech discount on Unpluggd tickets for 2 days

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As we wrote earlier, Pluggd.in is one of the most influential sites as far as coverage of Indian startups is concerned, and their flagship event, Unpluggd is coming to Pune on the 19th. By long-standing policy, PuneTech does not explicitly promote paid tech events on the front page unless the event is exceptional, or the rates are very low, or, ideally, both. In case of Unpluggd, both of these are true, but for PuneTech readers, the rates are even better because:

Get a 25%+ discount on Unpluggd tickets (buy here (Ayojak – Pune startup) or here (doattend)) until 13th November by using the discount code PTECH. This gives you the ticket for Rs. 500 instead of the full price of Rs. 700.

What to expect at Unpluggd? Demos from 10 startups, selected from over 340 nominations received from all over India. Talks by some of India’s most successful startup founders and VCs. And networking. The community in Pune does an excellent job of holding lots of tech/startup events in Pune and giving opportunities to network locally; but events like Unpluggd give the opportunity to network with the startup community from all over India.