Tag Archives: PHP

“Drupalkar” – an initiative to disseminate Drupal Love to Pune colleges

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(This post gives an overview of a new initiative by the Pune Drupal Community to increase Drupal awareness amongst Pune college students. It was originally posted on drupal.org by Dipen Chaudhary and is reposted here for wider dissemination.)

Overview

drupal icon, svg version
Click on the logo to see all PuneTech posts about Drupal. Image via Wikipedia

In the last pune drupal user meetup ( 26th dec, 09) we all agreed to the need of more drupal awareness as a whole and one of the ways we discussed was to tap the interest early at the student level. To this effect project code named drupalkar (having both hindi and marathi connotations) was planned in which seasoned drupal developers will donate 1 hr to a student gathering in a college to spread drupal joy/way of web development. Approach here is simple, in that 1 hr drupal developer would demo how a website can be made from scratch in 1 hour in form a interactive demo and giving out more ideas and possibilities at the end of the demo. The same would be followed in many colleges with different developers donating time with different demo’s (or maybe same, if one works out to be exceptionally good to catch attention)

Approach

Approach to reach out to students is simple, show something they can make in an hour rather than a speech/talk on why drupal, how drupal? as the talks get incoherent ( its upto the drupal developer conducting the demo session to open up for Q/A which I strongly recommend) and over the time ineffective. We would pickup models from internet and show students how to make that site in drupal and how easy web development is with drupal.

Pilot

To pilot the drupalkar project we decided to pick 5 colleges (list pending and hopefully will be sorted in comments) and 5 drupal volunteers, after which we will map colleges to drupal volunteers and let the individual drupal developer run the show, with some syncing among developers over whats being demo’ed, what was the response etc. As the events would be linear we can adapt and evolve from the feedback of the initial events.

Drupal Volunteers (Drupalkar’s)

  • Dipen Chaudhary
  • Rajeev Karajgikar
  • Parsad Shirgaonkar
  • Nikhil Kale
  • Abhishek Nagar

Colleges

  • PICT (TBC)
  • COEP (TBC)
  • Wadia College (TBC)
  • Narangkar (not sure of the name; TBC)
  • Symbiosis ( Abhishek to confirm)

College Coordinators

  • Arun Nair
  • Amit Karpe
  • Vipul (PICT contact)

Timeline

Tentative timeline for the pilot to be executed is 5-6 weeks, which might be adapted and updated on this page for clarification.

Notes

Drupalkar currently is only for pune and maybe taken over to new cities in India by drupal evangelists else where. I am cross posting this to India group for feedback on the approach etc.

Any comments, feedback on the approach or volunteering is important for success of drupalkar, most importantly we need students and organizers to patch colleges in for the drupalkar pilot.

(Comments on this post are closed. Please comment at the original website)

You can still go for Joomla! Day (free) – India’s biggest Joomla conference – 25 April

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Joomla logo
Joomla logo

Joomla! Day India, will be big. Toby Patterson, a member of the Joomla! Core team development workgroup member (Update: Sorry about misidentifying Toby – Live tweets from the event indicate that his keynote was great), will be giving the keynote speech. Members of the Joomla! bug squad will be there. And they are coming in from outside the country, so if you miss them this time, you are not going to get a chance to interact with them in the next run-of-the-mill barcamp that happens in Pune, or even Bombay/Bangalore. So what’s your excuse for not going? Earlier, due to the costs of having external visitors for this event, the price of entry was Rs. 1000. But thanks to the organizers finding appropriate sponsors, everything, including the prizes worth $1600, the T-shirts, the lunch/snacks and other goodies are FREE! (Update: The T-shirts, snacks and other goodies are NOT FREE. They had to be removed to make the event free. Sorry about the misinformation.)

Register here.

It is tomorrow, Saturday, 25th April, from 9am to 6pm at I2IT campus, Hinjewadi. These are the sessions planned:

Keynote By Toby Patterson
Session 1: Hello Joomla!  – Joomla in 45 mins
Case Study 1
Session 2: Still on Joomla 1.0? Migration from 1.0 to 1.5
Session 3: Joomla & Cloud Computing – Amazon S3
Session 4: Request to Response
Open Sessions
Case Study 2

For other tech events happening in Pune this weekend, check out the PuneTech calendar.

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Seminar: Strengths and weaknesses of various programming languages – 28th March

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What: A presentation on the strengths and weaknesses of various programming languages, and how to choose one for your application, by Dhananjay Nene
When: Saturday, March 28th, 4pm
Where: SICSR – Symbiosis Institute of Computer Studies and Research – Map
Registration and Fees: This event is free for all. No registration required.

Details:
Confused about whether to use C/C++, or Java for your application? Or unsure of whether to go with Python, or Ruby, or PHP, or one of the many other “new” languages? Are you wondering whether it is worth the trouble to learn a hot new language?

Popularity of programming languages, or the number of jobs being offered for some programming language are not really good indicators by which to make your choice. It’s time to get some data on the fundamental technical differences between the major language groups today. It’s time to get some useful insights on the business implications your choice.

Dhananjay will discuss the relative merits and weaknesses of the major classes of modern programming languages and they reasons why you should choose one over the other for a specific application. He will cover both – technical issues in choosing a language, and business reasons.

This is targeted towards both – developers as well as managers who want to go past the religious debates over programming languages and want to be able to take decisions based on technical/business reasons as opposed to faith.

To get a primer for the material to be covered, check out the article Dhananjay wrote yesterday about how to improve your web based software development and maintenance ROI with dynamic programming languages

About the author – Dhananjay Nene

Dhananjay is a Software Engineer with around 17 years of experience in the field. He is passionate about software engineering, programming, design and architecture. He did his post graduation from Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, and has been involved in Senior Management positions and has managed team sizes in excess of 120 persons. His tech blog, and twitter stream are a must read for anybody interested in programming languages or development methodologies. Those interested in the person behind the tech can check out his general blog, and personal twitter stream. For more details, check out Dhananjay’s PuneTech wiki profile.

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Top 5 reasons why students should gate-crash Drupal Camp India – Jan 31

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Drupal
Image via Wikipedia

On Saturday, 31st Jan, from 10am to 5pm, 100s of Drupal enthusiasts will descend upon SICSR. It is a free (un)conference for Drupal developers, and entry was given a first-come-first-served basis. But as of this writing, Drupal Camp is full. However, Tarun Chandel, the god-father of all Pune unconferences, is encouraging everyone to gate-crash, and land up there, with or without registrations, and PuneTech fully supports him, (and so does Amit Kumar Singh, a.k.a. thecancerus).

That’s right – gate-crash, like uninvited wedding guests. It’s free, and it’s an unconference. Gate-crashing will actually be in the spirit of the event.

And if you are a student, then you must go, because in that one day, you will get more education than an entire month of your so-called classes.

With this in mind, here are PuneTech’s top 5 reasons why students must gate-crash Drupal Camp

  • Surprise your future employers: If you are in software, no matter what job you get, sooner or later you will be asked to build or oversee the building of a website, and there you should surprise everyone by having it ready, singlehandedly in one week as against their projections of 2-months using 3 people.
  • Beat the recession: As IT budgets get cut around the world, the web-development community will be hard hit, and companies will look to reduce spending on expensive web development. That’s why you should become a ninja at inexpensive web development using Drupal and its wide array of readymade modules.
  • Use this knowledge when you don’t get a job: Hey, let’s face it, if you are a student right now, it is very likely that you are not getting campus placement this year (or if you have been placed already, there’s a chance that it will get delayed or canceled). Instead of sitting around moping, the smart thing to do would be to start your own website and get to work for yourself. And for this, events like Drupal camp are great, for knowledge, for ideas and for contacts. For more reasons, see “Top 10 reasons why now is the best time to start a business with Drupal.”
  • Because you can: Think of all the poor little underprivileged students in Bangalore/Delhi/Hyderabad/Mumbai who cannot attend Drupal camp even if they want to. Because Drupal camp doesn’t happen in Bangalore. It doesn’t happen in Mumbai. It’s happening in Pune, and you are getting it free. Don’t give up this chance, because in the future, you (or your employer) will be charged exorbitant amounts for events like these, and you’ll still not be able to go because you have a stupid deadline.
  • Because PuneTech said so. And Amit Kumar Singh said so. And Tarun Chandel said so. And, I’m sure Rohit Srivastwa will say so as soon as he reads this. Seriously, you need to start listening to these guys.

If you are already going for Drupal camp, then please add to the list of reasons in the comments below.

Drupal Camp details:

What: Drupal Camp India ’09. Drupal Camp is a free, unconference, being conducted in Pune, with the objective to build up the community base and bring people closer. Details.
When: Saturday, 31st January, 10am to 5pm
Where: SICSR, 1st floor, Atur Centre, Gokhale Cross Road, Model Colony, Pune. Map.
Fees and Registration: This event is free for all to attend. Register here. Or not!

More from the website:

Drupal camp pune is an effort to pull in all drupal developers located in india to come together and cherish this wonderful CMS cum application framework. More than the sessions, its about interacting with fellow drupalers and listening to their experiences. This doesn’t discount us to not prepare session list, On our menu we have things like:

1> Advanced Module development
2> Site auto configuration using patterns.
3> Insight into Galaminds.
4> Managing staging,production and live sites specially syncing with Migraine.
5> Drupal on EC2
6> Case study on ILoveBolly

and much more…

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Help plan a JoomlaCamp or OpenSocialCamp in Pune

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After the amazing success of PHPCamp in Pune last week, and also noticing the amount of attention received by OpenSocial on the one hand, and PHP based CMSs (like Drupal, Joomla) on the other, some of the organizers of PHPCamp, and others, are thinking of having more specific barcamps in Pune on those two topics. The kickoff meeting to plan and organize those events is happening this Saturday, at the Level 9 Cafe, at ICC towers on S.B. Road. 

If you want motivation on why you should get involved in organizing events like this, check out Amit’s post on the 10 things he got out of organizing PHPCamp. Even if you miss the meeting, you can join late and follow the discussion over at the PHPCamp mailing list the OpenSocial Developer Garage mailing list.

Rohan Dighe, one of the primary organizers of this meeting, left the following comment, which gives much more detail on what this meeting is about. I am reproducing the comment here:

 

After PHPCamp, a few of us have been planning on an event specifically focused on Content Management Systems (CMS Camp) and also an event focused on Opensocial (building apps for orkut/myspace/hi5, etc).

Below are the details of ODG:-

The Opensocial Event is named “Opensocial Developer Garage”

We at Social Web Factory have been planning long to host an event like this specifically focused on social web apps and current web2.0 trends and looks like our dreams are coming true.

So, Opensocial Developer Garage’08 – Pune has a tentative date of (20th December’08, it’s a saturday!)

Now, the idea of the event is to unite all the social web apps developers from all over the country and just share/code/have fun and maybe inspire a few wannabee..

The idea is not to duplicate PHPCamp (get 750+ people) but to focus on the genuine/interested crowd, opensocial enthusiasts or app developers. I really have no estimate now of how many people would come or how everything would fall in place but i just have a feeling that this can be done.

The event is a free event but is an invitation only event, we will call for speakers as well as delegates as soon as our website is up.

My plan is to invite people from Google/MySpace/BigAdda/20 other social networking website owners and their developers. We really need people to have the “WoW!!” feeling when they are at the event.

Venue/Sponsors are yet to be decided. I am preparing an email which we will send to multiple groups including expert opensocial developers across the country and big SNS groups.

I guess that all i have for now:
The kickoff meeting to plan and organize those events is happening this
Saturday (tomorow) , at the Level 9 Cafe, at ICC towers on S.B. Road.

Agenda for the meet would be
1) To finalize goals for both the camps
2) un-conference/ conference
3) Budgets
4) Organizers/ Volunteers
5) Strategy/Game Plan
6) Resource Allocations
7) Venue.

I am setting up the website DeveloperGarage.in and should be up soon.

Google Groups have been setup.

All the discussions regarding Opensocial Developer Garage will happen here.

Join Up.

Homepage:
http://groups.google.com/group/developergarage

Group email: developergarage@googlegroups.com

OpenSocial Developer Garage now has a profile on the PuneTech wiki.

PHPCamp Pune – the biggest (un)conference in India

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PHPCamp in Pune this Saturday, with a reported 700+ campers, was easily the biggest barcamp-style event in India. There were people coming in from all over the country, including groups of students from various colleges (not necessarily from Pune). Unfortunately, I missed it, and I’m trying to make up for it by rounding-up all the blog posts about PHPCamp that have appeared over the weekend. I’ll update this post as more pop up. The PHPCamp website has a comprehensive list of all blog posts before and after the event.

Some of the presentations are online. Check them out.

Varun Arora gives the history of PHPCamp and a blow-by-blow account of how the day progressed. Priyank has another view of the history of PHPCamp. Rahul Bansal of the Devil’s workshop points out that Drupal and Joomla got a lot of airtime but was very surprised at the absence of the two most popular PHP platforms, WordPress and Facebook. A talk on OpenSocial by Pravin Nirmal appears to be one of the most talked about talks.

Amit Kumar at AmiWorks, one of the organizers, has put up photos of the volunteers from SICSR and Pune IT Labs who did a lot of the behind-the-scenes work. Amit has also written about the 10 things he gained from unorganizing PHPCamp. This should encourage all of you to organize some community event. 

Tarun Chandel one of the godfathers of all barcamp style get-togethers in Pune was also on hand and has uploaded a bunch of photographs of PHPCamp on his photoblog. You can see how crowded the rooms were, with probably more people standing than sitting.

Also check out these other blog posts about PHPCamp by Sebastiaan Deckers, Priyanka Parekh, Rishi Agarwal,  Jaguarnac, and MyPHPDuniya.

PHPCamp Pune will be huge – Sept 20

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What: PHPCamp is a barcamp for PHP enthusiasts from all over the country.
When: Saturday September 20, 2008
Where: Persistent Systems Pvt. Ltd., Plot No. 9A/12, CTS No. 12A/12, Erandwana, Near Padale Palace (Opp Sharda Center), Pune, Maharashtra 411 004

Registration: This event is free for all. Register here.
Website: http://phpcamp.org
PHPCamp is a ad-hoc gathering for PHP community. It similar to barcamp, but more focused towards PHP based web application development. This means that anyone can come to PHPCamp and participate. There is no set agenda – the agenda gets decided at the venue. If that sounds weird to you, you should read up on barcamps now.

Links

Keep up with all other interesting tech events happening in Pune at the PuneTech events calendar. Add your events there to reach a wide audience.
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Software Freedom Day – Sept 21

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What: Software Freedom Day – Celebrating GNU/Linux, PHP, etc.
When: Sunday September 21, 2008 from 11:00am – 3:00pm

Where: Bhaskaracharya Pratisthan
56/14, Damle Path, off Law College Road, Erandavane, Pune, 411 004.
Pune, Maharashtra

Program :
 1) Installation Demo: Fedora, Ubuntu, Open SuSE, Mandriva.
2) Install Fest: Bring your machine, we will install GNU/Linux on it.
3) Small Demo: Hands on Demo for c,php programming.

PS: Please give us your suggestions.
We want more Programs like talks, workshops.
So please come forward as speaker.
Also we want volunteers, who will help for this event.

For more information about – Software Freedom Day
http://softwarefreedomday.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_Freedom_Day

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Help Organize PHPCamp Pune

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PHPImage via Wikipedia

PHP enthusiasts in Pune are organizing a barcamp focused towards PHP based web application development, in September 2008. (If you don’t know what a barcamp camp is, now is a good time to find out.) What started out as a small initiative at getting together the PHP community in Pune for an informal gathering is, judging from the initial response, fast snowballing into a major all-India conference.

It is still very early, and the details are all still being worked out. Since this is an unconference, it is all volunteer driven, and anyone can participate, and more importantly, anyone can join the organizing committee. Which means that if you are interested in PHP, you should seriously consider helping out with the effort. They are still looking for speakers (and due to the unconference nature of the event, this will continue until the day of the event). More importantly they are looking for sponsors, to smoothen the process of hosting the event. This means that if you are a company (or know a company) that wants to get visibility with the most enthusiastic PHP developers in the country, you should sponsor this event.

In any case, join the mailing list to keep tabs on what the organizers are planning, and register yourself for attending the event, so they have an idea of how many people to expect.

Check out other technology user-groups and organizations in Pune at the PuneTech wiki (for example, Pune Java, Pune Ruby, Pune Linux User Group, PHPCamp, Pune Project Management Institute etc.)

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