Tag Archives: students

4th Mentor India Internship in System Programming

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For the last 2 years, KQInfoTech has been trying various experiments in trying to take the students that are output from our engineering colleges and then actually provide them with the education that the college should have been doing, and the Mentor India Internship in System Programming is one such initiative. They take on a batch of about 15 to 20 students and teach them system programming fundamentals with a very hands-on practical approach. While the students are learning, they are expected to work on actual Industry projects that KQInfoTech gets from other companies based on the reputation and vast experience of KQInfoTech’s founders (and now a track record of KQInfoTech that is slowly being built). At the end of this 1-year program, students leave with a lot of real life experience, and most of them are either absorbed by KQInfoTech or find jobs in industry at the end of the program.

Click on this icon to see all PuneTech articles related to tech education in Pune
Click on this icon to see all PuneTech articles related to tech education in Pune

The best part of this is that the students actually get paid a stipend during this period. It is unfortunate that there exist companies in Pune today which actually charge students for the internship that the students do with them. This practice is, in my opinion, despicable. But the desperation of students is such that in many cases, they end up paying. In such a scenario, even an unpaid internship starts looking attractive to students. In this context, the fact that KQInfoTech is doing a 20-person classroom style training-cum-work internship with stipends is very commendable.

This is what we wrote about KQInfoTech in one of our previous articles about them:

Pune-based KQInfoTech is an organization started by Anurag Agarwal and Anand Mitra, both of whom chucked high-paying jobs in the industry because they felt that there was a desperate need to work on the quality of students that is being churned out by our colleges. For the 2 years or so, they have been trying various experiements in education, at the engineering college level. All their experiments are based on one basic premise: students’ ability to pay should not be a deterrent – in other words, the offerings should be free for the students; KQInfoTech focuses on finding alternative ways to pay for the costs of running the course.

In January, they are starting their 4th batch, and looking for students to join this batch. The entrance exam is on 9th and 10th January. If you’re a student interested in making a career in systems programming, you definitely need to appear. For more details see the KQInfoTech website.

Internship Mela: Get full-time interns (for 6 months) for Pune companies – 23 Dec

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What: Internship Mela, to allow companies to find students for 6-month internships
When: Wednesday, 23rd December, 10am to 1pm
Where: Institute of Management and Career Courses (IMCC) campus, 131 Mayur Colony, Kothrud, Pune 411029.
Registration and Fees: This is a free event. Students do not need to register. Companies must register here
Eligibility (Students): Any student who has read all the instructions given in here is eligible to apply. Student must be studying for a computer science degree, and is interested in a full-time, 6-month, internship with a Pune company can attend. Just show up at the venue at 9:30am.
Eligibility (Companies): Only Pune companies are eligible. You must register at the Internship Mela Registration page

Background

Students who are studying for MCS/MCA/M.Sc. ( Computer Science ) typically have to do internship (Industrial Training) with some company for 6-months (basically their last semester of college) as a part of their degree requirements. The students are expected to work full time for the company during this period, and are typically paid a stiped by the company. At the end of this period, the company is expected to give a certificate of completion of the internship, and the student are expected to submit a project report and give a presentation in their college. These students have usually completed all the other requirements of their degree, so they do have all the knowledge that a MSc/MCA/MCS degree holder is expected to have – specifically, exposure to .NET, Java, PHP & Linux etc. Internships for a number of colleges will start in January 2010 (to continue until June 2010), so December 2009 is the right time to get students.
And other side we have lots of IT startup companies who are looking for best talent. So we are organizing an “Internship Mela” where companies that are offering internships can give a short presentation (3 minutes) to the students, and then students can apply to the companies they find most interesting.

Internship Mela – 23 December 2009

‘Internship Mela’ will be held Wednesday, 23st December, 2009, in the morning, at Institute of Management and Career Courses (IMCC) campus, 131 Mayur Colony, Kothrud, Pune 411029.The details are as follows:

  • All companies who would like to offer full-time 6-month internships are requested to register at the Internship Mela registration page
  • All students, from any college in Pune (or outside), who are doing a Computer Science degree course and who are interested in doing a 6-month internship starting in January 2010 are open. No registration is required. Just come to IMCC at 9:30am on 23rd December, 2009.
  • Company representatives are requested to be at the venue at 9:45am.
  • From 10am to 1pm: Each company gets to present to the engineers for 3 minutes. Give a quick introduction of yourself, your company, what projects you plan to do with the interns, what kind of skills you are looking for, and whether you will be paying a stipend or not, and your contact info.
  • In the afternoon, smaller rooms will be made available to companies who are interesting in meeting students right away. (Alternatively, companies who don’t want to stick around in the afternoon can ask the students to contact them later over email/phone.)

The idea is that this is a marketplace designed to allow companies to find students quickly.

To register as a company offering internships, please follow these steps

  • Join the techstart mailing list (click on “Join this group” link on the right side of the page)
  • After joining, go to the Internship Mela Registration Page and add yourself to the list there. (Click on the “Edit this page” button, then add your info just above the last line in the list.)
  • Come to IMCC at 9:45am on 23rd December, 2009. Prepare a 3-minute talk that can help the potential interns decide whether they are interested in your project. Be as specific as possible. (Note: there will be no slides/projector)

Students interested in this program – just show up at the venue at 9:30am (see details above). No registration required. Bring multiple copies of your resume.

Credenz’09: PICT’s 3-day tech event for students – 18-20 Sept

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Credenz is PICT‘s annual technical event for students of Computer Engineering, Electronics & Telecommunication and Information Technology. It is one of the more popular collegiate tech fests that happen in various engineering colleges in the state.

This year, they are trying something new. They are going online and free. There are a number of contests that are open for participants from all across the country. This includes paper presentation contest, business plan proposal, technical quiz, and programming contest. Prizes worth Rs.2.5 lacs (and counting), in cash and in kind will be distributed to all the event winners. In addition, there will be seminars and workshops that will be broadcast live online, including sessions on Silverlight, Azure, Android, Google Wave, Ethical Hacking, and more.

The event is from 10:30am to 5pm on September 18th to 20th. You can register at http://credenz09.info/registration.asp. Detailed schedule and speaker profiles are available here: http://credenz09.info/sem_work.asp.

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Tech Trends for 2015, by Anand Deshpande, Shridhar Shukla, Monish Darda

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On Monday, I participated in a Panel Discussion “Technology Trends” organized by CSI Pune at MIT college. The panelists were Anand Deshpande, CEO of Persistent Systems, Shridhar Shukla, MD of GS Lab, Monish Darda, GM of BladeLogic India (which is now a part of BMC Software), and me.

Anand asked each of us to prepare a list of 5 technology trends that we felt would be important in the year 2015, and then we would compare and contrast our lists. I’ve already published my own list of 5 things for students to focus on last week. Basically I cheated by listing a just a couple of technology trends, and filled out the list with one technology non-trend, and a couple of non-technology non-trends.

Here are my quick-n-dirty notes of the other panelists tech trends, and other points that came up during the discussion.

Here is Shridhar’s list:

  • Shridhar’s trend #1: Immersive environments for consumers – from games to education. Partial virtual reality. We will have more audio, video, multi-media, and more interactivity. Use of keyboards and menu driven interfaces will reduce. Tip for students based on trend #1: don’t look down on GUIs. On a related note, sadly, none of the students had heard of TED. Shridhar asked them all to go and google it and to checking out “The Sixth Sense” TED video.
  • Shridhar’s trend #2: totally integrated communication and information dissemination.
  • Shridhar’s trend #3: Cloud computing, elastic computing. Computing on demand.
  • Shridhar’s trend #4: Analytics. Analytics for business, for government, for corporates. Analyzing data, trends. Mining databases.
  • Shridhar’s trend #5: Sophisticated design and test environments. As clouds gain prominence, large server farms with hundreds of thousands of servers will become common. As analytics become necessary, really complicated, distributed processes will run to do the complex computations. All of this will require very sophisticated environments, management tools and testing infrastructure. Hardcore computer science students are the ones who will be required to design, build and maintain this.

Monish’s list:

  • Monish’s trend #1: Infrastructure will be commoditized, and interface to the final user will assume increasing importance
  • Monish’s trend #2: Coming up with ideas – for things people use, will be most important. Actually developing the software will be trivial. Already, things like AWS makes a very sophisticated server farm available to anybody. And lots of open source software makes really complex software easy to put together. Hence, building the software is no longer the challenge. Thinking of what to build will be the more difficult task.
  • Monish’s trend #3: Ideas combining multiple fields will rule. Use of technology in other areas (e.g. music) will increase. So far, software industry was driven by the needs of the software industry first, and then other “enterprise” industries (like banking, finance). But software will cross over into more and more mainstream uses. Be ready for the convergence, and meeting of the domains.
  • Monish’s trend #4: Sophisticated management of centralized, huge infrastructure setups.

Anand’s list:

  • Anand’s trend #1: Sensors. Ubiquitous tiny computing devices that don’t even look like computers. All networked. And
  • Anand trend #2: The next billion users. Mobile. New devices. New interfaces. Non-English interfaces. In fact, non-text interfaces.
  • Anand’s trend #3: Analytics. Sophisticated processing of large amounts of data, and making sense out of the mess.
  • Anand’s trend #4: User interface design. New interfaces, non-text, non-keyboard interfaces. For the next billion users.
  • Anand’s trend #5: Multi-disciplinary products. Many different sciences intersecting with technology to produce interesting new products.

These lists of 5 trends had been prepared independently, without any collaboration. So it is interesting to note the commonalities. Usability. Sophisticated data analysis. Sophisticated management of huge infrastructure setups. The next billion users. And combining different disciplines. Thinking about these commonalities and then wondering about how to position ourselves to take advantage of these trends will form the topic of another post, another day.

Until then, here are some random observations. (Note: one of the speakers before the panel discussion was Deepak Shikarpur, and some of these observations are by him)

  • “In the world of Google, memory has no value” – Deepak
  • “Our students are in the 21st century. Teachers are from 20th century. And governance is 19th century” -Deepak
  • “Earning crores of rupees is your birthright, and you can have it.” – Deepak
  • Sad. Monish asked how many students had read Isaac Asimov. There were just a couple
  • Monish encouraged students to go and read about string theory.
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TechStart.in: Microsoft Azure Training Program for 2009 CS graduates

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Click on this icon to see all PuneTech articles related to tech education in Pune
Click on this icon to see all PuneTech articles related to tech education in Pune

As a part of the Techstart initiative (visit http://techstart.in for rationale and more details), a program for training on Application Development on the Microsoft Azure Cloud Computing platform is being offered to computer science students graduating in 2009. This initiative is based on the lines of a very successful initiative at Stanford University.The idea is that there will be a 6 to 8 week Azure training and application building course consisting of classroom lectures interspersed with self-study programming assignments. The course will be co-ordinated by Monish Darda, Director and CTO of Websym technologies, with help from Persistent Systems, the Pune User Group (a Microsoft Technologies user group in Pune), and will be run by volunteers from across the industry,

To facilitate this, a “Train the Trainers” program is being planned, to build mentoring expertise for people who want to volunteer to help in this initiative. This is a free program, and volunteers would be needed to teach the course and/or guide the students. This needs people who have industry experience and are ready to spare some time for teaching/handholding/mentoring the students on the Azure platform. To participate, you should have the following prerequisites:

a. Basics of .NET framework platform

b. Basics of C#.net and Visual Studio IDE

c. Basic Understanding of WCF (windows communication framework)

Volunteers should be able to spare approximately a total of 16 hours during the eight week TechStart program, tentatively scheduled to begin on July 27.

The Train the Trainers program details follow:

Date: Saturday, July 18, 2009 – 9.30 a.m. to 6.00 p.m.

Venue: Persistent Systems Ltd.

‘Aryabhata Pingala’

9A, Erandavane, Near Nal Stop, Off Karve Road

Pune 411004

To register please mail kaustubh_bhadbhade@persistent.co.in with “TechStart: Microsoft Azure Training Program”

TechStart Internship Mela: Connect with 200 CS graduates for your projects – 18th July

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Click on this icon to see all PuneTech articles related to tech education in Pune
Click on this icon to see all PuneTech articles related to tech education in Pune

Last week we wrote about the hundreds of CS engineering graduates who are temporarily idle, and the techstart initiative where we are hoping to connect up companies, startups or individuals who can use these engineers for their projects. To facilitate this, an ‘Internship Mela’ will be held on Saturday, 18th July, from 2pm to 6pm, at the Dewang Mehta Auditorium, Persistent, S.B. Road.

The basic idea behind the ‘Internship Mela’ is as follows:

  • All those who would like to find engineers for their projects are invited to attend
  • All engineers who are interested in getting internships will attend
  • From 2pm to 4pm: Each potential company/startup/mentor/guide gets to present to the engineers for 3 minutes. Give a quick introduction of yourself, your company, what projects you plan to do with the interns, what kind of skills you are looking for, and whether you will be paying a stipend or not, and your contact info.
  • From 4pm to 6pm: Open networking. The potential interns will walk up to the mentors that they are interested and discuss details and set up a follow up meeting.

The idea is that this is a marketplace designed to allow mentors to find students quickly.

To register as a company or individual offering internships, please follow these steps

  • Join the techstart mailing list (click on “Join this group” link on the right side of the page)
  • After joining, go to the TechStart Internship Mela Registration Page and add yourself to the list there. (Click on the “Edit this page” button, then add your info just above the last line in the list.)
  • Come to Dewang Mehta Auditorium, Persistent, S.B. Road at 1:45pm on 18th July. Prepare a 3-minute talk that can help the potential interns decide whether they are interested in your project. Be as specific as possible. (Note: there will be no slides/projector)

Students interested in this program – just show up at the venue (see details above). No registration required. Bring multiple copies of your resume.

About TechStart

Anand Deshpande of Persistent started this initiative to help out the computer science engineering students who graduated in 2009, but had their job offers deferred or rescinded. The idea is to give the engineers some industry experience, and at the same time allow the industry to get some useful work done. See http://techstart.in/ for details. TechStart consists of many volunteers from across the industry, and a whole bunch of other Pune organizations (like CSI Pune, Pune Open Coffee Club) are also helping out.

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Mentor India internship in system programming – Entrance exam on 20th July

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Click on this icon to see all PuneTech articles related to tech education in Pune
Click on this icon to see all PuneTech articles related to tech education in Pune

Pune-based KQInfoTech is an organization started by Anurag Agarwal and Anand Mitra, both of whom chucked high-paying jobs in the industry because they felt that there was a desperate need to work on the quality of students that is being churned out by our colleges. For the 2 years or so, they have been trying various experiements in education, at the engineering college level. All their experiments are based on one basic premise: students’ ability to pay should not be a deterrent – in other words, the offerings should be free for the students; KQInfoTech focuses on finding alternative ways to pay for the costs of running the course.

This week, KQInfotech launches the second edition of “Mentor India: An Internship Program in System Programming”,  for the people looking for making a career in the system programming.

It is a program in “Gurukul” tradition of education. There are two unique features of this program.

  • Cost: Your education does not depend on your capacity to pay. Not only your education is free, you also get stipend during this program.
  • Work experience: You are also getting real industry work experience during your education. During this course, you will get one year worth industry experience.

Does working in Linux Kernel, writing device drivers for Unix and Windows, writing system level programs that interacts closely with operating system interests you? But you don’t have right skill sets for this.

KQInfotech is lead by people who have spend decades working in the area of file system, kernel programming, Linux kernel etc. They are ready to educate you in “Art of System Programming”. Are you ready for all the hard and interesting work required?

It is a unique post graduate program for one year, which would provide you education as well as work experience. This program will cover Unix internals, Linux kernel programming, Multi-threading, Windows internals, Writing device drivers etc.

Please visit www.kqinfotech.com/mentoring/ for more details.

Candidates for this course will be selected based on an entrance exam and interview.
Entrance will be based on C, Data Structure, O/S concepts and aptitude test.

Entrance Exam details:
Date: 20th July
Time: 10:00 AM
Duration: 90 Minutes
Venue: A-201, Mitrangan, Near Kapil Malhar, Baner Road, Baner, Pune 411045
Email: mentoring@kqinfotech.com

If you’re interested please fill the Online Registration Form for Entrance Exam.

Check out previous PuneTech articles on KQInfoTech. You might also be interested in the techstart program.

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200 CS graduates want to help you with your pet project

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Hundreds of B.E. (Computer Science) students who graduated in 2009 are now idle for a few months because their job offers have been deferred by their future employers. What is a potentially nasty psychological and social problem can easily be converted into a win-win situation for everybody concerned if people in the industry come forward and provide projects for these graduates to work on in the intervening period. If you are an experienced industry person, by providing a few hours of guidance, you can get some useful work done, and and the same time help the graduates improve their skills, and become more employable.

Anand Deshpande, CEO of Persistent, who is the driving force behind this effort, points out that there are over 200 students in this situation right now, and the industry could help itself while at the same time helping the students by coming up with, say, 3-month projects that small teams of students could complete. He points to web-2.0, e-Governance, and the cloud as potential technologies that might be rather well suited for this purpose. As an example of something like this working well, and producing useful, real-world output, he points to the Stanford class where 80 students created 50+ facebook applications, with over 20 million installs, and 5 of them had 1 million+ installs. There is no reason something like that cannot work with our crop of students.

It must be pointed out that many of these students are the star students who got recruited straight from campus, but now find themselves in this situation because their job offers got defered of revoked.

So what should you do?

We have created a mailing list called TechStart.in that will be used to co-ordinate this effort.

  • If you can guide small student teams, and if you can commit to giving at least a couple of hours per week for the next three months, then join the techstart.in mailing list, and post a small mail introducing yourself.
  • In a few days, we will specify how and where to post information about your project and/or how to find the appropriate students for your project. This information will be posted on the mailing list.
  • If you don’t have any specific project in mind, but would generally like to help out with this effort, please join the mailing list and give a brief background of yourself. We can use all the help you can provide
  • If you can think of any other ideas that can help out in this situation, please suggest those on the mailing list. All proposals are welcome.
  • This program is only going to work if we are able to collect at least 30 to 50 mentors who can guide the students. We will start work seriously on this only after a reasonable number of people have shown an interest on the techstart.in mailing list. If there’s not enough interest shown on the list in the next few days, this program will die. So if you’re interested, please send a mail on techstart.in. If you know somebody else who might be interested, please forward this mail to them.

Benefits

This is really a win-win situation

  • You get good CS graduates from good colleges working for you
  • If things work out and the team does a good job, you get a great, tested employee
  • The student learns valuable industry skills, gets guidance, and becomes more employable
  • There is no necessity to pay the students for this work. (However, you could give a stipend if you are possibly interested holding on to the student for a long-term job.)

Logistics and other details

Here are some details that I glossed over in the write-up above:

  • This program is targeted towards Computer Science graduates of the class of 2009.
  • Anand Despande has already contacted the colleges and they have all indicated a willingness to help out with this effort. Persistent is also willing to help with some resources. Other companies are expected to follow suit. So rooms, facilities, and other logistics help will be available if required.
  • If you can conduct 3-month Stanford-style course for one batch of students building a bunch of facebook apps, or Microsoft Azure apps, or Google android apps, or anything else, please come forward. As long as you’re willing to drive, appropriate resources can be made available to you.
  • If you have any other ideas, please suggest them on the mailing list.

Conclusion

This is a great opportunity to do something socially useful and get something in return. So join. And make others join. Right now, all you need to do is indicate your availability and willingness. More details will become available soon.

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MCCIA Seminar: “Why MBA?” (for students and parents) – 21st May

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mccia-pune-logoWhat: A seminar targeted towards graduates and their parents on why they should do an MBA. With Arun Mudbidri, Director SIBM, and Sreeram Geet, Career Counsellor
When: Thursday, 21st May, 10:30am-12:30am
Where: Hall no. 3, 5th Floor, Wing A, MCCIA Trade Towers, ICC Complex, S.B.Road
Registration and Fees: This event is free for all to attend. Please contact Mr. Shriniwas Rairikar / Ms. Sandhya Acharya at MCCIA, Tel: 25709179 / 25709000 Email: shriniwasr@mcciapune.come / sandhyaa@mcciapune.com

Agenda for the Seminar

  • Suitable Timing to Start Necessary Mindset
  • Understanding & Maturity Understanding of Competition
  • Knowing about the Institute What is suitable for me?
  • Basic Future Career Building Career Bricks
  • What is the course & what after that?

Mr. Arun Mudbidri, Director of Symbiosis Institute of Business Management, Pune is the Chief Guest.

About the speaker – Dr. Sreeram Geet

Dr. Shreeram Geet is a professional Career Counsellor associated with Jnana Prabodhini Sanshodhan Sanstha, Pune. He has guided more than 6500 students. He was the Guest Speaker for career fairs held by Director of Technical Education, Maharashtra State. Dhirubhai Ambani Foundation also invited him as a Guest Speaker for 2006-2007 and also He has written 4 books on ‘Career Guidance’ and has conducted several ‘Career Guidance Seminar / lectures.

For other interesting events in Pune, see the PuneTech Calendar, or better yet, subscribe to get updates (free) by email or via RSS

“My Story” with S.B. Mujumdar, Founder of Symbiosis – 29th April

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TiE Pune LogoWhat: TiE Pune and MCCIA Pune invite you to a session with S.B. Mujumdar, founder of Symbiosis
When: Wednesday, 29th April, 6pm
Where: ICC Towers, 5th Floor, Wing A, Senapati Bapat Road, Map
Registration and Fees: This event is free for all to attend. Register by sending an email to namita[dot]shibad[at]gmail[dot]com

About the speaker – S.B. Mujumdar

In 1971 he established the Symbiosis International Cultural & Educational Centre in Pune primarily to promote friendship, co-operation and understanding between foreign and Indian students and to cater to the needs and difficulties of foreign students studying in Pune, mostly Afro-Asian students.

Since then, under the aegis of ‘Symbiosis’ he has established 34 institutions imparting training in 200 different courses ranging from KG, Primary, Secondary education to Law, Human Resource Development, Foreign Trade, Management, Computer, Arts & Commerce, Mass Communication, Telecommunication, Information Technology etc.

Symbiosis today is the premiere educational institute of Pune and a brand equity in providing quality management education. Presently 30,000 students from 80 different countries and all states of India are studying in various institutions of Symbiosis. About 2 lacs students are enrolled in Symbiosis Centre for Distance Learning.

You are invited to hear it from his own perspective.

The event is open to all with no fee applicable. However as seats are limited, it is preferred if you register your presence by sending an email to: namita[dot]shibad[at]gmail[dot]com

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

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