10:30 AM: I am again at scintillating campus of IIM, and as predicted I see only few bikes and cars around, which means not many people have turned up for the 2nd day of the event.
11:00 AM: I am struggling to get Wifi up. I am in Startup collective attending a session by a guy from Proto.in and a VC who was an investment banker in his previous avatar.They have following advice to budding entrepreneurs,
1. Identify a problem
2. Look out for a solution
3. Validate the idea.
4. Look out for a Mentor
5. Structure your organization, define roles for various people in the org.
6. Decide a business model: Monetize the idea
7. Launch prototype
8. Mind sharing(blog, podcasts, barcamps etc.)
9. Funding (prefer angels)
10. Scale up
11. Expansion
Business plan: Write a business plan for yourself not for VC's. if you are going to write it casually, then VC's are going to do the same.
11:00 AM: Roaming around, talking to people about Pune, Bangalore, Expensometer, Clubhack, Ruby collective.
01:00 pm: Having lunch, met Sean who runs Babalife and Babajob, an Indian networking website. Babajob allows jobs based on referrals among the community. I show him Expensometer and has some good ideas on making the UI more intuitive which would motivate the users to use the site. he explains how important and useful SMS integration is for such a website. I agree and tell him plans about integration with SMS gateways.
03:00 PM: I am attending a session by Bhavin on Active Messaging plugin in Rails, which would allow integration of Rails apps with already existing enterprise applications. here are more details about the plugin,
1. http://code.google.com/p/activemessaging/wiki/ActiveMessaging
2. http://www.infoq.com/articles/intro-active-messaging-rails
03:30 PM: Satish Kota from heurion consulting, starts to talk about Ruby, Rails and Active Record. he explains various principles of Ruby and Rails like DRY, Convention over Configuration, etc.
04:15 PM: I decide to call it a day since I had to board a flight in another couple of hours.
08:30 PM: Welcome to Mumbai, thats what Rain god has to say.
01:00 AM: I am at my home in Pune, hitting my bed and retrospecting last 2 days.
Thanks to all the organizers, volunteers, Banglorians for making this barcamp a success.
Monday, July 30, 2007
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Bangalore Barcamp 4: Day1
Saturday
05:00 am: Woke up, got ready and headed towards Pune airport.
08:45 am: Onboard, thinking about the activities, sessions lying ahead in the day.
10:20 am: I am on cloud no. 9 and flight has started descending.(thinking, how awesome it would be to see these clouds around when I wake up everyday.)
11:15 am: Already thrilled by beautiful weather of Bangalore and now I see even more beautiful campus of IIM bangalore.
11:30 am: Registration done, looking at schedules and confirming about sessions in Ruby collective which are lined from 03:00 pm today. I meet my friend Angrez and then we decide to sit in lawn and discuss about Rails and Ruby(FireWatir). we talk about how beautiful Ruby is and explain principles of Rails to Prema and Angrez.
11:45: Met Amit who is talking about code Jam and hacking night. Introduce him and others to clubhack event being organized for the month of December in Pune.
12:30 pm: Starving.. decided to get a bite at CCD.. ate costliest samosa in my life, 16 bucks!!! its about to be lunch time in another hour an hour.
01:00 pm: wandering around in IIM campus, seeing IIM students studying in the shade of trees.. head towards canteen where lunch is being served..had good lunch and now gearing up to participate in Ruby sessions.
02:00 pm: Attend a session on tips for investors which I think was quite introductory and boring.
03:00 pm: Angrez kick offs Ruby collective by a session on Firewatir generator. he talks about how he has mentored a Google Summer of Code project which is about using TestGen4Web addon to Firefox which records actions performed by user on Firefox browser, to generate a FireWatir script. Audience starts comparing FireWatir to Selenium and are confused when to use which tool.
04:00 pm: Vivek starts his talk titled Deploying Rails applications in which he covers
a. Web Servers: Apache, Nginx, Lighttpd: Nginx becoming the defacto becuase of its low memory footprint and ability to have weighted load balancing.
b. Application Server: brief intro to Mongrel
c. Rails hosting: Shared(unsuitable for Rails 1.2+), VPS and Dedicated hosting. VPS is the best option considering the cost effectiveness and control a user has.
d. Monitoring Rails application: Using Monit to monitor Rails apps.
e. Cron jobs: for clearing stale sessions, database maintenance, clearing logs.
Wonderful session!
Here is link to the presentation
05:30: pm: Call it a day and head towards MG Road and Brigade Road which has been suggested by many banglorians.
Coverage for Day-2 in next post.
05:00 am: Woke up, got ready and headed towards Pune airport.
08:45 am: Onboard, thinking about the activities, sessions lying ahead in the day.
10:20 am: I am on cloud no. 9 and flight has started descending.(thinking, how awesome it would be to see these clouds around when I wake up everyday.)
11:15 am: Already thrilled by beautiful weather of Bangalore and now I see even more beautiful campus of IIM bangalore.
11:30 am: Registration done, looking at schedules and confirming about sessions in Ruby collective which are lined from 03:00 pm today. I meet my friend Angrez and then we decide to sit in lawn and discuss about Rails and Ruby(FireWatir). we talk about how beautiful Ruby is and explain principles of Rails to Prema and Angrez.
11:45: Met Amit who is talking about code Jam and hacking night. Introduce him and others to clubhack event being organized for the month of December in Pune.
12:30 pm: Starving.. decided to get a bite at CCD.. ate costliest samosa in my life, 16 bucks!!! its about to be lunch time in another hour an hour.
01:00 pm: wandering around in IIM campus, seeing IIM students studying in the shade of trees.. head towards canteen where lunch is being served..had good lunch and now gearing up to participate in Ruby sessions.
02:00 pm: Attend a session on tips for investors which I think was quite introductory and boring.
03:00 pm: Angrez kick offs Ruby collective by a session on Firewatir generator. he talks about how he has mentored a Google Summer of Code project which is about using TestGen4Web addon to Firefox which records actions performed by user on Firefox browser, to generate a FireWatir script. Audience starts comparing FireWatir to Selenium and are confused when to use which tool.
04:00 pm: Vivek starts his talk titled Deploying Rails applications in which he covers
a. Web Servers: Apache, Nginx, Lighttpd: Nginx becoming the defacto becuase of its low memory footprint and ability to have weighted load balancing.
b. Application Server: brief intro to Mongrel
c. Rails hosting: Shared(unsuitable for Rails 1.2+), VPS and Dedicated hosting. VPS is the best option considering the cost effectiveness and control a user has.
d. Monitoring Rails application: Using Monit to monitor Rails apps.
e. Cron jobs: for clearing stale sessions, database maintenance, clearing logs.
Wonderful session!
Here is link to the presentation
05:30: pm: Call it a day and head towards MG Road and Brigade Road which has been suggested by many banglorians.
Coverage for Day-2 in next post.
Barcamp Pune-3: Setting up a global technology company
This is a follow up post of Barcamppune-3 makes my Saturday enjoyablein which I had promised to blog about session about Setting up companies in USA/Singapore/UK sitting in India.
Rohas Nagpal of Techjuris talked about how beneficial and easy it is to start tech companies in USA, UK and Singapore remotely sitting in India rather than opening a company in India.
Few points in favor of opening companies abroad are,
1. Immediate prestige and more customers
2. Very easy(2 hours/1 week, 6 days for UK, US, Singapore respectively) and quick to setup companies with almost zero upfront capital.
3. Help from respective embassies by approaching them with a tag of owner of a US based company. unlike Indian embassy working with which is a pain in the ass.
4. Taxation: ZERO % tax in US for all the revenue earned from customers who are outside US.(Tax in UK and Singapore is 35.4% and 28.8 % respectively)
5. The best part is you don't need any local director of US and not even a physical office in US!( Even UK requires no local director. Singapore needs one local director.)
Rohas elegantly presented the whole idea of setting up businesses remotely. the question that remains at the end of day is whether its easy to run the business remotely sitting in India?
Here is a link to video recording of the presentation,
Setting up businesses remotely in US/UK/Singapore
Rohas Nagpal of Techjuris talked about how beneficial and easy it is to start tech companies in USA, UK and Singapore remotely sitting in India rather than opening a company in India.
Few points in favor of opening companies abroad are,
1. Immediate prestige and more customers
2. Very easy(2 hours/1 week, 6 days for UK, US, Singapore respectively) and quick to setup companies with almost zero upfront capital.
3. Help from respective embassies by approaching them with a tag of owner of a US based company. unlike Indian embassy working with which is a pain in the ass.
4. Taxation: ZERO % tax in US for all the revenue earned from customers who are outside US.(Tax in UK and Singapore is 35.4% and 28.8 % respectively)
5. The best part is you don't need any local director of US and not even a physical office in US!( Even UK requires no local director. Singapore needs one local director.)
Rohas elegantly presented the whole idea of setting up businesses remotely. the question that remains at the end of day is whether its easy to run the business remotely sitting in India?
Here is a link to video recording of the presentation,
Setting up businesses remotely in US/UK/Singapore
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
I am going to BarcampBangalore4
So I have booked my tickets to attend one of the most popular barcamps of India, Barcamp of Silicon Valley of India - Bangalore.
I will be spending most of the time at Ruby Collective. Hoping to have a good time with fellow Rubyists.
Anyone from Pune or Mumbai attending?
I will be spending most of the time at Ruby Collective. Hoping to have a good time with fellow Rubyists.
Anyone from Pune or Mumbai attending?
Monday, July 09, 2007
Ruby Conference at the next Barcamp Bangalore
Yes, you read that right, its unofficial Ruby conference happening in bangalore barcamp on July 28th and 29th July.
From Sidu Ponnappa blog,
"The next Barcamp Bangalore will be run in a new format involving creating a series of mini-conferences around particular topics. These mini-conferences, called 'Collectives' give participants a hot-spot where then can expect to meet others who share their interests. We're hoping to use this format to attract all those Rubyists in and around Bangalore so we can hang out, trade ideas and have a fun time."
Personally, I think mini-unconference, is a nice idea. I now can focus solely on what I am interested currently in.
Hope to meet fellow rubyists provided I can make it to Bangalore.
From Sidu Ponnappa blog,
"The next Barcamp Bangalore will be run in a new format involving creating a series of mini-conferences around particular topics. These mini-conferences, called 'Collectives' give participants a hot-spot where then can expect to meet others who share their interests. We're hoping to use this format to attract all those Rubyists in and around Bangalore so we can hang out, trade ideas and have a fun time."
Personally, I think mini-unconference, is a nice idea. I now can focus solely on what I am interested currently in.
Hope to meet fellow rubyists provided I can make it to Bangalore.
Sunday, July 08, 2007
Barcamppune-3: Developing Facebook application in Ruby on Rails.
Abhijit gave a talk on how to create and integrate an RoR application with much talked about Facebook platform.
Interesting fact to know was that, in about a months time "1500+" facebook applications have been developed and "65" million facebook applications have been downloaded.
Facebook allows developers to make their existing application(made in Java/ PHP, Ruby on Rails, many more platforms) or create new applications, integrate with Facebook platform.
Facebook API can be consumed by an application and then this application can appear in users profile on Facebook by Facebook Canvas or Iframe approach(where external appliction runs within an iframe in Facebook)
Abhijit mentioned about ILike, one of the most famous applications developed and integrated with Facebook platform.
Abhijit demonstrated how a Ruby on Rails application can be made run within facebook or independetly using the RFacebook, unofficial Ruby Facebook client library.
I wanted to present on exactly the same topic, but due to lack of time(read my laziness), I couldn't. I caught up with Abhijit to discuss some more details about Facebook platform and our discussion concluded with following,
1. Facebook has very limited javascript features in canvas mode.
2. Facebook users information can be pulled using API's for your application
3. Can be used for viral marketing. Developing a cut down facebook version for marketing your actual product.
4. Could be difficult to port an existing application to Facebook, especially with Canvas approach and FBML(Facebook markup language)
With this background now, I hope to do something in this area soon.
Interesting fact to know was that, in about a months time "1500+" facebook applications have been developed and "65" million facebook applications have been downloaded.
Facebook allows developers to make their existing application(made in Java/ PHP, Ruby on Rails, many more platforms) or create new applications, integrate with Facebook platform.
Facebook API can be consumed by an application and then this application can appear in users profile on Facebook by Facebook Canvas or Iframe approach(where external appliction runs within an iframe in Facebook)
Abhijit mentioned about ILike, one of the most famous applications developed and integrated with Facebook platform.
Abhijit demonstrated how a Ruby on Rails application can be made run within facebook or independetly using the RFacebook, unofficial Ruby Facebook client library.
I wanted to present on exactly the same topic, but due to lack of time(read my laziness), I couldn't. I caught up with Abhijit to discuss some more details about Facebook platform and our discussion concluded with following,
1. Facebook has very limited javascript features in canvas mode.
2. Facebook users information can be pulled using API's for your application
3. Can be used for viral marketing. Developing a cut down facebook version for marketing your actual product.
4. Could be difficult to port an existing application to Facebook, especially with Canvas approach and FBML(Facebook markup language)
With this background now, I hope to do something in this area soon.
Friday, July 06, 2007
Barcamppune-3 makes my saturday enjoyable
Barcamp fever is back in Pune with rainy welcome from Rain Gods. After spending last week doing preparations for Barcamp Pune event at my current organization, Persistent Systems, I was really hoping to witness a good un-conference with the help of lots of meaningful discussions and sessions. And now after Barcamp is over, when I look back at those precious 8 hours, boy! I think there couldn't have been a better way to spend a saturday.
Being an organizer, I sure was lucky enough to attend as close to 5 sessions(summing up the half sessions that I had attended).
Session which requires a special mention and the one which enlightened me the most was Setting up a global technology company by http://techjuris.com. Rohas(Lawyer by profession), walked everyone through how easy it was for an Indian to setup a company remotely in USA, UK and Singapore sitting here in India. I will write a separate post about points which Rohas had put forward in favor of opening companies in USA/UK /Singapore rather than India.
TVGuide.in session by Rakesh Raju of http://codewalla.com/ included introduction to TVGuide.in and requirements gathering from audience. Really a very good place to gather requirements.
About TVGuide.in, its a TV programs schedule service built for India, it provides following features at the moment,
1. List of about 100 channels, data being fed from respective channels websites, for e.g. Star channels from Star TV network., that solves the problems of authenticity of data!
2. Search for particular programs across various categories.
Some of the features that Rakesh mentioned he is thinking of were include watching trailors, or probably full programs on TVGuide.in(but thats something which will take another 5 years in India).
Audience suggested that a community can be built around this application where users can submit reviews about programs, add other users as friends and see what they are interested in.
My second session( first half session) of the day was Intoduction to Microsoft SilverLight by Aditya Thatte. I came in about 15 minutes late and saw Aditya demoeing Expression Blend, tool for developers to build silverlight enabled interfaces.
Then it was turn for session on much-talked about Facebook platform and its integration with Ruby on Rails by Abhijit Gadgil, http://oltsm.blogspot.com., more on this session and discussions with Abhijit in a separate post.
Before lunch I caught up with Akshay Surve, whom I know since Pune Rails Hackathon days. he told me that he was there to take interviews today and release them as podcasts. good stuff, hope to hear those interviews soon.
I talked to Swanand about his Google Summer of Code project of developing an ETL tool in Ruby. he explained me about various features of his tool, primarily,
a. Profiling of data,
b. multiple data sources( flat files, postgres, mysql)
c. DSL for developers and rake task for specifying extract operations(sources and filtering).
By the time I joined "Developing a Firefox plugin" by Vinod Kulkarni, he was almost done with explaining the various steps in developing a plugin to firefox by using XUL. This regret coming in late, since I have developing firefox plugin in my wish list.
To end the day for me(there was one more session remaining but I opted for networking at barcamp), it was Open Source Education" by Freeman Murray. Freeman started with mention of blog entry of Riya CEO Munjal shah where he says how costs of hiring good developers in India are getting comparable to US.
Freeman's response was to spread the awareness of Open source education, make it reach rural areas so that we have more self-skilled people. he mentioned about his efforts with Digital Study Hall project to create video courseware materials in a wide range of technical subjects and making them available to wider audience.
Oh yes not to forget, Rohit announced about Clubhack ,the first hackers hangout of India, event that is being planned for the month of December.
Last but not the least, A big thanks to all the sponsors, volunteers,speakers and ofcourse all the attendees of the event to make this event successful.
See you at next barcamp.
Being an organizer, I sure was lucky enough to attend as close to 5 sessions(summing up the half sessions that I had attended).
Session which requires a special mention and the one which enlightened me the most was Setting up a global technology company by http://techjuris.com. Rohas(Lawyer by profession), walked everyone through how easy it was for an Indian to setup a company remotely in USA, UK and Singapore sitting here in India. I will write a separate post about points which Rohas had put forward in favor of opening companies in USA/UK /Singapore rather than India.
TVGuide.in session by Rakesh Raju of http://codewalla.com/ included introduction to TVGuide.in and requirements gathering from audience. Really a very good place to gather requirements.
About TVGuide.in, its a TV programs schedule service built for India, it provides following features at the moment,
1. List of about 100 channels, data being fed from respective channels websites, for e.g. Star channels from Star TV network., that solves the problems of authenticity of data!
2. Search for particular programs across various categories.
Some of the features that Rakesh mentioned he is thinking of were include watching trailors, or probably full programs on TVGuide.in(but thats something which will take another 5 years in India).
Audience suggested that a community can be built around this application where users can submit reviews about programs, add other users as friends and see what they are interested in.
My second session( first half session) of the day was Intoduction to Microsoft SilverLight by Aditya Thatte. I came in about 15 minutes late and saw Aditya demoeing Expression Blend, tool for developers to build silverlight enabled interfaces.
Then it was turn for session on much-talked about Facebook platform and its integration with Ruby on Rails by Abhijit Gadgil, http://oltsm.blogspot.com., more on this session and discussions with Abhijit in a separate post.
Before lunch I caught up with Akshay Surve, whom I know since Pune Rails Hackathon days. he told me that he was there to take interviews today and release them as podcasts. good stuff, hope to hear those interviews soon.
I talked to Swanand about his Google Summer of Code project of developing an ETL tool in Ruby. he explained me about various features of his tool, primarily,
a. Profiling of data,
b. multiple data sources( flat files, postgres, mysql)
c. DSL for developers and rake task for specifying extract operations(sources and filtering).
By the time I joined "Developing a Firefox plugin" by Vinod Kulkarni, he was almost done with explaining the various steps in developing a plugin to firefox by using XUL. This regret coming in late, since I have developing firefox plugin in my wish list.
To end the day for me(there was one more session remaining but I opted for networking at barcamp), it was Open Source Education" by Freeman Murray. Freeman started with mention of blog entry of Riya CEO Munjal shah where he says how costs of hiring good developers in India are getting comparable to US.
Freeman's response was to spread the awareness of Open source education, make it reach rural areas so that we have more self-skilled people. he mentioned about his efforts with Digital Study Hall project to create video courseware materials in a wide range of technical subjects and making them available to wider audience.
Oh yes not to forget, Rohit announced about Clubhack ,the first hackers hangout of India, event that is being planned for the month of December.
Last but not the least, A big thanks to all the sponsors, volunteers,speakers and ofcourse all the attendees of the event to make this event successful.
See you at next barcamp.
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