Tag Archives: online

Scala University: A free continuous learning initiative for the Scala Programming Language by ThoughtWorks Pune

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Scala University is an initiative of Scala practitioners from Pune – who want to drive continuous learning/teaching of Scala in the form of free public workshops. It was started by developers at ThoughtWorks who are passionate Scala users for many years. As of now, Scala University is specifically interested in helping communities in and around cities where ThoughtWorks has offices.

How did it start?

The people who started Scala University felt that they have benefitted a great deal from the open source Scala Language, the wonderful Scala community, and from other free and open resources around the web, for example, like Coursera courses on Scala and Reactive programming. They felt that they should give back to the community, and that is why “Scala University”

As a first step, they conducted a 4-day Scala Workshop in Pune on 20-23 June 2014. The event was “free” for all those who could clear a coding test. The response was overwhelming:

  • It got 350 registrations
  • 95 of them submitted the coding assignments
  • 30 candidates were selected after code review
  • 29 of them confirmed and attended all 4 days of the training!
  • Along with them, 10 ThoughtWorkers also attended, taking the total batch size to 40
  • Apart from developers there were 5 Quality Analysts and 1 Project Manager
  • The experience level varied widely: from 1st year engineering grads to people with 12+ years of experience.

The workshop also generated huge amount of goodwill in the local community. Enthused with the success, they conducted the 2nd workshop in Gurgaon on 24-27 July. The numbers were similar (around 25 people including 6 ThoughtWorkers attended). The 3rd workshop is scheduled in Chennai on 4-7 Sep. Workshops in Hyderabad, Singapore and Bangalore are being considered. You can keep track of list of all events conducted so far.

How does it work?

The Scala deep-dive workshop currently covers language fundamentals with hands on assignments. The workshop is always planned around the weekend. So, each attendee (which include ThoughtWorkers) have to invest 2 working days, plus a full weekend for the workshop. People have suggested compressing the workshop to 3 days, but it needs at least 4 full days to give a complete perspective of the basic language.

Folks from local ThoughtWorks offices are critical for organizing and logistics. They also help with the code reviews. Reviewing so many code submission is the most difficult task.

The workshop is announced around 1 month in advance. Roughly 25% of those who register submit the code, and 30% of those who submit the code qualify for the workshop. The course turns out to be ‘intense and fun’ for smart developers.

What are the rewards?

Learning and teaching Scala is a joy which in itself is a big reward. But there are other good side effects of this initiative:

  • Building local community around Scala
  • Building internal Scala capability within ThoughWorks
  • Positively influencing hiring. Some attendees from the 1st workshop applied to ThoughtWorks, and ThoughtWorks ended up making 2 offers!
  • Companies in the local markets find out about the workshop with requests for doing a dedicated commercial training.
  • The workshop model has inspired similar trainings by other ThoughtWorkers. See Agile Dev Bootcamp w- hich is scheduled on 15-August.

Next steps

Scala University also wants to do this in other cities where ThoughtWorks has offices, and they want to do multiple batches at each location if there is enough interest. If you are are a ThoughtWorker interested in doing a batch of “Scala University” in your city, please get in touch. If you are a potential attendee, please let them know in which cities you would like to attend these workshops. Based on that data, they might also plan a workshop in cities where ThoughtWorks does not have a office (for example, Mumbai or Nagpur).

Many have requested workshops on advanced/focused topics. The following topics are being considered:

  • Reactive programming (futures, promises, streams and actors)
  • Tools (Sbt, Play, Akka)
  • Big data computing (Spark stack)

If you’re interested, let them know about your preferences

For more information, see the Scala University website or see the contact us page there.

Pune based AdSparx gets Rs 3.5cr Angel Funding From @IANetwork (@manish_saarthi @sharads)

Money Matters, , , , ,

DealCurry is reporting that Pune based AdSparx, a company that allows video publishers to seamlessly and automatically insert ads into their videos at runtime has received Rs 3.5cr in angel funding from Indian Angel Network, Mumbai Angels, and GrowX Ventures

Excerpts from the announcement:

LetsVenture CEO Manish Singhal and Indian Angel Network’s Sharad Sharma acted as lead investors for the deal.

About the company:

The company was founded in 2012 by former Patni Computers employee, Kunal Lagwankar. AdSparx uses a server side technology to serve device independent, high quality, targeted, pre & mid-roll video ads for linear TV, live events and videos on demand. It counts NexGTV, Vodafone, Airtel and Sony Liv among its notable clients. The startup has done mid-roll ads for online streaming of Indian Premier League, French Open and New Zealand Cricket Series in the past.

About the product:

  • AdSparx’s unique real-time targeted Ad Serving technology works for all devices, irrespective of OS or form-factor, while retaining smooth switching between video and Ad content for a seamless experience
  • Linear TV, Live Events & On-demand Video
  • AdSparx works with your existing content delivery set up and requires no modification. AdSparx easily integrates with Wowza, Adobe FMS and Apache servers and content delivery networks
  • ‘Lowest’ time to Market: A single point of integration on your servers for all your Ad serving needs, AdSparx does not require any changes in your client apps and cuts down your time to market drastically

About the team:

The founders all seem to be people who worked in Patni, founded Novix Media in 2005, then joined Patni in 2008, and finally started AdSparx in 2012. Details:

In case you find such things interesting, here is a US patent application (not yet granted) that AdSparx has filed.

Read the full article

University of Pune prepares a Math textbook, and puts it online for free download

Miscellaneous, , , ,

In a heartening display of moving forward with the times, the University of Pune has not only published a new textbook to match the recently updated syllabus for first year Maths for B.Sc. and B.A., but they have made the entire textbook available online as a free download, reports Pune Mirror.

This is a great step forward. Students who are used to the slow moving and bureaucratic education systems in India, will notice three unique characteristics that should make them happy,

  • It is online
  • It is free
  • They are soliciting feedback and suggestions for improvements, which they claim they will incorporate in future versions

Any one of these would have been cause for celebration. All three is just too much.

No wonder University of Pune has been picked by the government of India as 1 of the 4 universities to get Rs. 300CR “National Innovative University” scheme.

Excerpts from the article:

In the absence of a single prescribed textbook, Bachelor of Science (B Sc) students studying under the University of Pune (UoP) have always had to shuffle between various reference books. With the Board of Studies realising this issue, the varsity’s Department of Mathematics has compiled an official mathematics textbook .

Not only is such an effort the first of its kind, it has also been uploaded on the University’s website for free download.

According to Dr S A Katre, Head of Department, Mathematics at UoP,

“During the process, we decided to go a step ahead and considering the changing times, came up with an online textbook.”

and

“It is for the first time that an official University textbook is made available online for free,”

And, most importantly, this is just the first step. There is more to come:

The book could be found for download at http://math.unipune.ac.in/FyBsc.htm. The department is now working on the books for the second term and will gradually take out books for further terms. Soon, the entire bunch of textbooks, particularly designed by adhering to the new syllabus for mathematics, will be ready online.

Read the full article

Pune’s Ayojak integrates Cash-On-Delivery payment option in its ticketing service

Overviews, , , ,

Ayojak, a Pune-based company that offers a suite of technology solutions & services for online event ticket selling, conference registrations, payment processing, event promotion, and event logistics, has become one of the first such services to integrate COD (cash-on-delivery) as a payment option for their online event ticket sales service.

As anybody familiar with the ecommerce situation in India is aware, COD is one of the most important forms of payment in Indian ecommerce, since Indians are still not very comfortable with using credit cards online. Thus, offering a COD option almost becomes a must-have for any product or service that is being sold online. Inspite of the fact that COD is an expensive option in general (often with charges of up to Rs. 100 per delivery), it is still the most common form of payment for many ecommerce vendors in India.

In this context, we believe that this announcement by Ayojak would be welcomed by many event organizers and potential customers of Ayojak.

In an article on YourStory.in, Santosh Panda, Founder & CEO of Ayojak explains the thought process behind this announcement:

“We see that close to 45-55% of our users have trouble in booking tickets online through Net banking, Credit cards or Debit cards, sometimes the payment gateway is too busy to respond or the connection is very slow and the browser times out. Because of these various reasons most of the users or frustrated with the online ticket booking experience and prefer the offline mode. Even from our in-house research and analysis and from consumer surveys – we see that the demand for CoD is very high in India, as a major chunk of our population still do not have access to Debit or Credit cards and not to forget the large community of students as well.”

Here are more details of the exact service offered:

Ayojak have integrated their event ticketing & registration e-commerce engine with several logistics solution provider like – FedEx (AFL), GharPay, and Santa Claus Couriers. This tie up will enable Event Organisers to reach the last miles of customer’s convenience and enables users to buy event tickets from the comforts of their home, office or other various locations from across 3000 cities/town in India. For all CoD delivered using Ayojak’s integrated solution, event organizers will be provided with a detailed CoD tracking system and easy, timely and assured delivery of orders. Ayojak has already been privately serving few selected customers to deliver thousands of CoD across India.

PuneTech caught up with Santosh Panda to get a few more details about this new service in particular, and about Ayojak in general.

Are there any other online event/ticketing providers that providers that provide an integrated COD solution? If yes, how is Ayojak’s solution different?

Santosh: There are likes of BookMyShow.com who do this for bigger events only. However with Ayojak, any event (whether big or small) now can avail the COD solution and plan to reach much larger segment of event ticket buyers to pay via cash. Our other competitors don’t have this solution.

What are the extra charges for COD tickets?

Santosh: We are charging 100 rs for delivery less than 1700 rs. For delivery amount from 1701 Rs onward, we charge 6%. The rates may sound higher but if we compare average online charge which is 5%, this is reasonable. Also COD has several complexities such as genuine buyers vs. not, insurance by logistics provider whether money is lost/stolen, support for COD tracking, many such issues. Also COD is designed as part of payment solution suite.

Can you give a quick overview of Ayojak? How is it different from the competition?

Santosh: Ayojak’s mission is to solve 360 degree aspect of an event management. Hence while competitors are focusing on online registration only, we are solving customer’s following pain such as :

  • Payment via online-cash-retail payment solution : Helping event organizer to avail all payment channel and sell it out
  • Promote: Ayojak promotes event heavily in various channels and we consider this as our job. Whereas our competitors don’t provide this as a service or spend time in helping an event get promoted. Ayojak provides promotions like ‘digital marketing, social media contest/content oriented promotion, advertisement on Google Ad/LinkedIn’. We intend to bring more ‘conversion’ oriented solution in coming days.
  • Support: Ayojak provides huge support during an event such as answering event attendee queries, event setup related help if needed, tracking each payment and reaching buyer to help them to select other options, many such. Our customers are very happy with Ayojak support.
  • Product : While our competitors looking event as one type, Ayojak is designed to treat each event type differently. For example a ‘Sonu Nigam Event’ is different from ‘Indian Medical Conference’. Therefore we have developed different apps such as ticketing app, conference app to solve the process flow needed in each type.

Also Ayojak apps are designed keeping the 360 degree principle : Create, Promote, Sell, Support.

Where is Ayojak located. Specifically we’re interested in what part of Ayojak is in Pune, and what exactly does the Pune team do.

Santosh: Ayojak’s Pune team is the prime team, most of our biz/tech decisions/development happens from Pune. Also our key sales & marketing team in pune, although we have freelancers and employees located in Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad/Visakhapatnam.

For more information, check out Ayojak.com

Proto.in online startup meet – May

Events, , , ,

Compared to how things were a few years back, the Startup Community has come together in such a fabulous way. We have OpenCoffee Club meets, Startup Lunches, Startup Saturdays, Mobile Mondays, Barcamps, Ideacamps etc, etc, and the plethora of other activities that organizations such as TiE, NEN, NASSCOM, etc are providing to benefit this same target audience.

All that said, we understand that most of these benefits are enjoyed by those who live in the major cities, and in most cases in the cities down south. There hasnt been much activities going on in cities such as Hyderabad, Pune, Kolkatta, Ahmedabad or any where in Kerala to bring the community together and to share, ask questions, and receive support from one another.

In an attempt to bridge that, we are hosting an online meet this Saturday at 3pm at http://chat.proto.in. Most of you would know how to login, and the process is quite simple. Visit the URL, enter a nickname and you could join in.

If you would be participating, do send a reply to this mail, and feel free to ask any questions if you do have any. You are also more than welcome to invite your friends, should they be interested, and ask them to join.

I look forward to seeing you there this weekend.

Posted by Vijay Anand over at Pune OpenCoffee Club

Pune Municipal Corporation gets CIO, new website, wiki

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PMC has gone hi-tech. Yesterday, they unveiled a new, improved website that is expected to be more userfriendly. They can now apply for birth and death certificates online and pay municipal taxes online. PMC is the first corporation to have a payment gateway (through ICICI bank and HDFC bank) according to CIO Anupam Saraph.

Yes, Pune has a CIO – Chief Information Officer. The PMC collaborated with SEAP, the Software Exporters Association of Pune, to appoint Anupam, who will guide the direction of all hi-tech goodness that is to happen in PMC soon. Pune is also the first municipal corporation to have a CIO.

“The website has been a voluntary effort by the software companies in Pune such as Persistent software, Eclipse software who provided manpower purely on a voluntary basis,” said Saraph.

The other important feature in the website is the inclusion of Wiki software that allows creation of an employee zone for internal management of the corporation.

Through Wiki, employees would now be able to create, edit, link, and organize the content of the projects they are involved in.

To ensure better navigation, the PMC website will change every month. “In the next version Wiki software will allow the citizens to talk about development plans of the city. Later versions intend to include the software for citizens to help the corporation with their strategic infrastructure expertise, so as to develop a standard in the city,” said Saraph.

“Till now we have trained 180-odd employees and expect to train 50 employees a month to ensure more usage of the software,” he said.

The website in it present form has been visited by more than half a million people.

Source: ZDNet India