Tag Archives: user groups

Basic course on Linux by PLUG – Oct 6

What: A basic course on Linux conducted by Pune Linux Users Group (PLUG)

When: Monday, 6th October. 4pm to 6pm. 

Where: Symbiosis Institute of Computer Studies and Research (SICSR), 7th floor, Atur Center, Model Colony, Pune, India (Map)

Registration and Fees: The event is free for all. No registration required.

Details
This is a very basic GNU/Linux course. The aim is to provide some hands on experience to the user so as to make him aware of all the different features and flavors of a GNU/Linux OS. At the end of the course, a user should be able to connect to and browse the internet, send receive mails, create rich text documents, spreadsheets, presentations, administer personal system etc. all using a GNU/Linux system and various free software available on the net.

Check out the detailed syllabus for this course.

Pune Linux Users Group Meeting – Oct 4

What: Pune Linux Users Group (PLUG) monthly meeting

When: Saturday, 4th October. 4pm to 6pm. 

Where: Symbiosis Institute of Computer Studies and Research (SICSR), 7th floor, Atur Center, Model Colony, Pune, India (Map)

Registration and Fees: The event is free for all. No registration required.

Details
The PLUG meeting is open to all, there are no charges or pre-requisites to attend the meeting. If you are intrested in FOSS (Free/Open Source Software) you are welcome to the meeting. If you want to give a talk or a demo, you are welcome.

This meeting happens on the first Saturday of every month, at the same place and time. Usually, a PuneJava talk organized by IndicThreads also happens immediately after the PLUG meeting, but apparently not happening this month. 

Symbiosis Institute of Telecom Management (SITM) is organizing a two day seminar on Telecom Management at their beautiful campus at Lavale village. Details of this meeting, and all other interesting tech events in Pune can be found at the PuneTech calendar.

Pune SharePoint Day – 2nd October

Rizmos Solutions in conjunction with the Pune User Group (which really, really needs to rename itself as the Pune Microsoft Technologies User Group) is hosting a half-day seminar about Microsoft Sharepoint. Both speakers are from Rizmos (technically, eTek which is Rizmos’ parent company), which provides consulting and services in this space. Hopefully, they will talk more about SharePoint and less about their services. 

If you don’t know what SharePoint is, now is a good time to find out:
In computing, the Microsoft SharePoint product sold by Microsoft includes browser-based collaboration and document-management platform. It can be used to host web sites that access shared workspaces and documents, as well as specialized applications like wikis and blogs from a browser. 
It is an important “enterprise 2.0” technology that you should know about.
Details:
Thursday October 2, 2008 from 9:30am – 2:00pm
MCCIA Hall in ICC Convention Center  

ICC Convention Center, Senapati Bapat Marg
PuneMaharashtra
Category: Education
09:30 am Reporting
10:00 am Welcome
10.15 am Key note (Mr. Robert Bye)
10.45 am Tea Break
11.00 am Opportunities in sharepoint (Mr.Ameet Phadnis)
01.00 pm Lunch  

For more info about the speakers, see here.

This event is free for all. Register here.

As usual, see the PuneTech calendar for the latest and greatest tech events in Pune. And if you like PuneTech, please email your friends about it.

Help plan a JoomlaCamp or OpenSocialCamp in Pune

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.

Liveblogging CSI Pune’s Entrepreneurship Seminar

I’m at CSI Pune‘s Entrepreneurship Seminar. Please forgive the haphazardness and lack of flow/organization. I’m liveblogging. Hopefully, better structured articles will emerge after a few days.

Arrived late and missed Anand Deshpande’s Keynote address.

What do VCs look for

Manik Arora, Founder and Managing Director of IDG Ventures India is talking about how to approach a VC. How they decide who to fund.

How to contact a VC.
Don’t call or send email without any introduction. VCs like to hear about you from someone they trust. A customer, ideally. Or a known successful entrepreneur, seed investor, etc. Otherwise they have no idea how seriously to take you.

Also, ideally, a VC who is going to invest a huge amount of money in you, likes to feel that he knows you. So, he would be much more comfortable investing if he’s known you for an year or two. Which means that you should meet and interact with VCs even if you are not looking for funding. You don’t want funding right now, but an year from now, when you are looking, and if you’ve been “hanging out” with that VC for a while, he will feel much more comfortable.

The Business Plan
Is important. It’s main purpose is to ensure that VC wants to meet you. Should contain the:

  • Elevator pitch
  • Vision and Mission statement
  • Market and Industry Environment – Size, Segment, Growth, Issues/Trends
  • Value Proposition, Key Products/Services and Sustainable Differentiation
  • Competition strengths and weaknesses and Entry Barriers
    • Most Indian Business Plans don’t have this.
    • If this section is done really well, VC gets quickly interested.
    • Shows that you are a sophisticated business person, as opposed to a techie.
  • Business Model and Sales/Marketing Strategy
    • What is the revenue driver, and what is the cost drivers
  • Market Traction Achieved so far
    • This is hard for early stage investors
    • So you probably don’t have much, but important to show speed with which you got there
  • Management Team Bios/Details
  • Organization Structure
  • Financials – Historical Actuals, Forecasts; Cash Flow + P&L
  • Exit Options – Names, Comparables, Price Paid, Multiples
  • Capital Required – How much, for what, over what timeframe
  • Risks and Gaps – What could go wrong, what don’t you have

Details available at http://idgvcindia.com

Do you need experience? Yes.
Start in a large company, so you know what business is about, what process is about, and also what are weaknesses of a big business, that you can exploit.

The Pitch/First Meeting: “Credibility”

Preparation before the meeting

  • Show up a little early. (You’ll be surprised at how many people come late.)
  • Dress appropriately. 
  • Have practiced your pitch a couple of times. 
  • Have a presentation ready / bring a couple of print-outs

During the meeting

  • Don’t try to only make your points – listen to them too
  • Answer questions directly
  • Ask the VC questions – gauge the VCs knowledge and style. It is fine to decide that you don’t like the VC and would not want to work with him
  • Discuss the deal briefly, don’t worry about valuation/dilution just yet
  • Towards the end, ask the VC the process going forward 
  • Towards the end, ask the VC how he can add value
  • Leave with next-steps clear and follow-up if you think this is a VC you want to take money from

Panel Discussion

Moderator is Madhukar Bhatia of nFactorial Software. Panelists are Manik Arora of IDG Ventures (whose talk forms the top half of this article), Yoshima Somvanshi of NEN (National Entrepreneurship Network), Sandeep Kumar, MD of Product Dossier, Vishwas Mahajan, CEO of CompuLink, Ajay Phatak, MD of Jopasana, Rajeevlochan Phadke (CEO of Image Point Technologies, a very interesting company that I hope to write about in a separate post). 

What environment is needed for successful startups?

Manik: A risk-taking society is a must. A person must be willing to take a risk. His in-laws must be OK with this decision. People must be willing to fund him – angel, seed, VC. Another problem with startups in India is that biggest market, US is too far away. Having a large domestic market is key – and that is slowly growing. CIOs in India are now willing to buy locally. Must have large feeder companies, where people can be part of growth and experience it, and learn from it, and find co-founders at. 

Ajay: In the “risk taking society” an important ingredient is also risk taking customers.

Sandeep: Customers are not willing to trust Indian startups. Can’t be sure the company will be around after 10 years. And this isn’t just the customer’s problem, because success stories are not there.

Vishwas: Early advice he got: He had an idea, and went to someone for funding. Was told: don’t come to me until you have 5 customers. That will teach you a whole bunch of things. And you will be taken more seriously. You don’t know all the real requirements and complexities until you have real customers.

What are the trends?

Manik: I don’t look at trends anymore. Look at the team. For example, everybody thinks web is hot in India now. But the last time the web was hot, about 25 to 30 companies got funded, and only 4 or 5 are still around. And now if you see, most of the top 15 websites in the world are actually platform companies. What can you do that would really be new and interesting?

Students in Startups (How to attract people to startups, and retain them)

Yoshima: NEN just had a startup jobs program. In some college in Delhi they had a placement day just for startups. 25 jobs where offered and 18 were accepted. One of the things that worked well is the fact that students did internships with startups, and got an idea that the work is interesting.

(Very cool, I think we should try something like this in Pune -navin)

Manik: I see lots of people in Wipro who work 14-15 hour days. And salary is less than what the market pays. So why do they all stick around? Apparently, the answer lies in Premji’s philosophy – whenever a guy is 60 to 70% ready for the next level in the job, he is pushed into that responsibility. They are too busy with their responsibilities to worry about leaving.

PHPCamp Pune – the biggest (un)conference in India

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.

CSI Pune Seminar on Entrepreneurship (Thu, 25th Sept)

What: CSI-Pune‘s seminar on entrepreneurship

Date and Time: 2 pm to 6 pm on 25-Sep-2008  

Where: Hall No. 4, A Wing, MCCIA Trade Tower, 5th Floor, ICC  Complex, Senapati Bapat Road, Pune 411 016

Registration: This event is free for all, but please register at www.csipune.org.

Details:

Today many professionals are aspiring to be entrepreneurs – mainly to get more job satisfaction, a sense of great accomplishment and personal financial gain. Entrepreneurship is often a difficult undertaking – especially so in IT business because there are rapid technological advances and significant competition. This seminar is aimed at featuring some “high-profile” entrepreneurs to share their experiences and provide valuable advice to aspiring entrepreneurs, provide inputs regarding raising of venture capital and discuss on how to build an entrepreneurial ecosystem.

 

Time

Event

Participant(s)

2:00 pm – 2:30 pm Registration  
2:30 pm – 2:40 pm Inauguration and release of CSINewsletter  
2:40 pm – 3:20 pm Keynote address Dr. Anand Deshpande (MD & CEO, Persistent Systems) / Dr. Srikanth Sundarrajan (COO, Persistent Systems)
3:20 pm – 4:00 pm Approaching VCs – How they decide who to fund Manik Arora (Founder and Managing Director, IDG Ventures)
4:00 pm – 4:15 pm Tea Break  
4:15 pm – 4:55 pm “Scaling Company successfully -> from Automated Securities to SunGard India” Harsh Barve (Vice Chairman, SunGard India)
5:00 pm – 6:00 pm Panel discussion – building an entrepreneurial ecosystem and helping bridge the perceived gaps as brought out by the VC ·                      Manik Arora (Founder and Managing Director, IDG Ventures)   

·                      Yoshima Somvanshi, Sr. Associate Consultant, National Entrepreneurship Network (NEN)

Entrepreneurs:

·                      Vishwas Mahajan (CEO – Compulink)

·                      Rajeevlochan Phadke (CEO – Image Point Technologies)

·                      Sandeep Kumar (MD, ProductDossier)

·                      Ajay Phatak (MD, Jopasana, a CoreObjects company)

·      Panel coordinatorMadhukar Bhatia (nFactorial Software, formerly VP at Symphony Services and Founder of In-Reality Software)

 


Related links:

Pune buzzing with tech activity this weekend (20 Sept)

This is going to be a very active weekend for tech activities in Pune. The big gorilla is of course, PHPCamp, the day long unconference for PHP enthusiasts on Saturday. With 700+ registrations from all over India (and indeed from other countries too), it promises to be a huge event even if just one third of the participants show up. Very impressive for a free event organized by volunteers in their free time. And if the enthusiasm seen at previous barcamps is any indication, the energy at this event will be awesome. This is a day long event at Persistent Systems near Null stop. Further event details are here.

If PHP is not your cup of tea, there are a couple of other events happening in parallel during the day. Dr. Neeran Karnik, a technical directory with Symantec Research Labs, Pune, will give a seminar on how to write good research papers at PICT. I’ve worked with Neeran for many years now, and he is good – both, as a researcher, and also as a speaker. If you have any intentions of doing research, or in general writing papers, I would say you should try to go for this one. Neeran has a PhD from the University of Minnesota, USA, and has worked with IBM Research Labs, Delhi, and Symantec Research Lab, Pune. He has been on numerous program committees of international academic conferences. He is also one of the original founders of CricInfo. This event is from 3pm to 5pm at PICT. Further details are here.

ThoughtWorks is organizing a Geek Night on Saturday afternoon, and the theme is Usability. Coming close on the heels of Pune OpenCoffee Club’s meetup on usability, this indicates that this very important field is finally getting the recognition it deserves in Pune. Abhijit Thosar, who has 20 years of experience in designing products based on emerging technologies will conduct the seminar. This event is from 2pm to 4pm at Thoughtworks, Yerwada. Further details are here.

Finally, September 20th is also Software Freedom day. But, wisely, the organizers have shifted the event to Sunday. This event will extol the virtues of free and open source software – like GNU/Linux, PHP – and is the place to go if you want to get started, or want help in any of these areas. Further details are here.

And Hemir Doshi, of IDG Ventures India, will be in Pune on Thursday and Friday, looking to meet early and early expansion stage technology and tech-enabled consumer companies. If you are interested in meeting hi, send him an email at hemir_doshi at idgvcindia dot com.

Stay in touch with all the interesting tech events happening in Pune, at the community-driven tech events calendar for Pune. Please note, it’s community driven. That means you. Please contribute. Add your events there.

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PMI Pune meeting – “Production Support” and “Earned Value Management”

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

Production Support – a Value proposition to Organizations by Mr. Prabhu K.B.

Earned Value Management – Challenges in Implementing EVM in IT organizations by Mr. Alok Khandelwal

Venue: Cummins Auditorium, Pune Shramik Patrakar Sangh, 193 Navi Peth, Ganjwe Chowk, Near Alka Talkies, Garware bridge & S. M. Joshi hall, Pune 411030. Reception (Tel) – +91(20) 24534190

Date/Time: Saturday, September 13, 2008, 10:00 am to 12:30 pm

Topic 1: Production Support – A Value proposition to Organizations

Mr. Prabhu will present an overview of Production Support and its need. He would present different methodologies adopted in Production Support and detailed discussion of the process. The seminar would also cover benefits of Production support to Organizations and comparison between Project and Production Support.

Speaker 1: Prabhu K.B.

Mr. Prabhu comes with 17 years of rich experience in the business & operations of Banking & Investment Banking, and IT Project Management, IT Support and Service Management.

He has lead a large team of 24*7 Production Support, managing different countries & time zones and redefined the Support process. Rated as the Best “Support/Service Manager” in SCB.

He is currently heading the Global Production Support in Barclays (Barclays Technology Centre India Pvt Ltd) for its Core Baking, Treasury and Cards business is responsible for maintaining the Application Stability and Availability. He is a Management graduate from one of the reputed institutes in India is also accredited with professional certifications like PMP, ITIL and JAIIB.

Topic 2: Earned Value Management – Challenges in Implementing EVM in IT organizations

The primary objective of Project progress measurement is controlling cost, raising alarms, highlighting areas of concern and implementing corrective actions to achieve objectives of the project. For a given scope, Cost and Time are important attributes in measuring project success. Measurements should direct managers to the point that needs their attention. There are multiple challenges in implementing right measurement tools to get the information efficiently and effectively.

This seminar would provide an insight on how to implement EVM in IT organizations.

Speaker 2: Mr. Alok Khandelwal

Alok is a Mechanical Engineer from Government Engineering College Jagdalpur (CG). He is a PMI Certified Project Manager and has about 10 years of experience in IT industry. He started his career with Infosys Technologies Ltd in Pune and worked as Project Manager during his association of 8 years with them.

He is currently associated with Redknee India. Redknee is a leading global provider of innovative communication software products, solutions and services. It provides real-time monetization and personalization products, solutions and services to over 30 mobile network operators globally. (www.redknee.com). His current responsibilities involve managing all deliveries from Pune R&D.

Note:

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

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

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

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

3) Chapter website: www.pmipunechapter.org

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POCC Meetup – How to bootstrap your startup

What: Pune OpenCoffee Club get-together. Discussion on “How to bootstrap your startup”, followed by presentation / demo by ActiveCiti, and general networking

When: Saturday, 13 September, 4pm – 7pm

Where: SICSR, Model Colony. Here is the map.

Registration and Fees: This event is free for everyone, but you must register at http://www.activeciti.com/public/display_event.aspx?id=150878bd-cc32-102b-a8dc-e4e2bf193de6

Details:

Agenda:
4pm-5pm: Discussion: How to Bootstrap your startup
5pm-6pm: Startup Spotlight: ThinkingSpace Technologies (ActiveCiti & EventAZoo)
6pm-7pm: General Networking

Bootstrapping your startup:
We will talk about the pros and cons of bootstrapping vs. venture funding a startup. Tips and techniques on how to bootstrap. We have invited three successful Pune-based entrepreneurs who have gone through this and will guide the discussion and share their experience. The panelists have over 50 years of combined experience and about 8 startup avatars. Details of the invited panelists are given below.

Startup Spotlight:
Pune-based startup ThinkingSpace Technologies will talk about their two products, ActiveCiti (which is already up and running) and EventAZoo (which is in a pre-launch phase). They will be looking for feedback, suggestions, collaborators, etc. In addition, they will also share some experiences they had regarding copyright (somebody copied their entire product), which should be instructive for other startups.

About the invited panelists:
Anand Soman, founder of Infinishare Technologies, after having two successful startups in the past, one of which was bootstrapped, and the other one was VC-funded. His current startup is again bootstrapped.

Tarun Malaviya, CEO of Mithi, has also seen both sides of the issue, initially having presided over a successful bootstrapped phase of Mithi, and then a later VC-funded re-incarnation.

Shridhar Shukla, founder and MD of GSLab, and has used a services business to successfully bootstrap their products business.

See the PuneTech calendar for a comprehensive list of all upcoming tech events in Pune