- Homepage for DEMO
- Day 1 live blogging from the conference
- DEMO Diary: Follow a company as it prepares to present at DEMO
- Videos of past presentations (For those who say that six minutes at Proto.in is too short, take a look at these videos)
- Some interesting tech from DEMO '08
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Wednesday, January 30, 2008
DEMO live blog and other interesting articles
If you've been following Proto.in, you might know that the initial inspiration came from the DEMO conference in the US. Well, DEMO is going on right now and it's interesting to follow the conference and see how everything happens there. So, if you are interested, check out these links
Monday, January 28, 2008
Coverage of the Chennai OpenCoffee Club
Chennai OpenCoffee Club has been profiled in an article on Hindustan Times' Mint business paper. Titled 'Entrepreneur meets turning Chennai into start-up hot spot,' it gives a nice overview of what has been happening in Chennai the last year.
On a related note, the Chennai OpenCoffee Club completed six months after the January meetup. It's hard to think that its half a year already. Time flies. The next meetup is on the Sunday coming up, the 3rd of February. The website has more details and a map.
On a related note, the Chennai OpenCoffee Club completed six months after the January meetup. It's hard to think that its half a year already. Time flies. The next meetup is on the Sunday coming up, the 3rd of February. The website has more details and a map.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
A whole bunch of events are coming up
Now that Proto.in is over, what next? I was checking out the list of upcoming events and February is quite packed.
To start with, FossConf Chennai takes place from 1st to 3rd of February. Take a look at the talks that have been lined up.
The next meeting of the Chennai OpenCoffee Club also takes place on the 3rd of February at Amethyst.
The weekend after that sees DevCamp at Bangalore. DevCamp was started after frustration that the Bangalore BarCamp is becoming less technical these days. So DevCamp will probably be a hardcore tech unconference. No "intro to xyz" talks here. Speakers can assume the audience has a sufficiently deep tech background and style their talks accordingly. Oh, and Martin Fowler will be attending as well.
Later in February is WebCamp in Chennai. This camp will discuss different web frameworks. I'll probably give a talk on Django. The hover.in guys are working in Erlang, so I expect that they will talk on writing web apps in Erlang. Expect a session on RoR from Vamsee or the RailsFactory guys. The dates are not finalised yet, but I'm hoping that this happens on the weekend of 15th.
(Hint: An easy way to keep track of community tech events happening in India is to join the India Unconferences and Events group on Upcoming)
To start with, FossConf Chennai takes place from 1st to 3rd of February. Take a look at the talks that have been lined up.
The next meeting of the Chennai OpenCoffee Club also takes place on the 3rd of February at Amethyst.
The weekend after that sees DevCamp at Bangalore. DevCamp was started after frustration that the Bangalore BarCamp is becoming less technical these days. So DevCamp will probably be a hardcore tech unconference. No "intro to xyz" talks here. Speakers can assume the audience has a sufficiently deep tech background and style their talks accordingly. Oh, and Martin Fowler will be attending as well.
Later in February is WebCamp in Chennai. This camp will discuss different web frameworks. I'll probably give a talk on Django. The hover.in guys are working in Erlang, so I expect that they will talk on writing web apps in Erlang. Expect a session on RoR from Vamsee or the RailsFactory guys. The dates are not finalised yet, but I'm hoping that this happens on the weekend of 15th.
(Hint: An easy way to keep track of community tech events happening in India is to join the India Unconferences and Events group on Upcoming)
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Proto.in 2008 roundup
So another edition of Proto.in comes to a close. This edition of Proto.in is special because it's going to be the last one in Chennai. The next edition will take place in Delhi (or maybe Mumbai) in July later this year. Since the event will be moving out of Chennai, there will be a new set of volunteers based out of Delhi/Mumbai to take this event forward.
Now that Proto.in is done, what is everyone saying about it? In this post, I'll collect various posts on the event from around the blogosphere.
To start with, head over to ReviewSaurus. Mayank, who writes the blog has reviewed a bunch of presentations with videos. So far, reviews of The Viewspaper, Antya, At One Place, Instablogs, Hover.in and Deskaway have been posted.
Next, Rajiv and friends over at WATBlog cover a number of talks from Day 1 of the event. Take a look at the overview of talks by Samir Sood, Atul Chitnis, Rajesh Jain ( and another one), and Surojit Niyogi.
Gaurabh Mathure gave a talk on Day 1 titled "Sexy. Trendy. Design. Technology." Read about his experience in this blog post.
Sujai of Sloka, one of the companies at the first Proto.in (and selected for this year's Headstart) came back to give a talk on Day 1 about how unglamorous a startup really is. In this post, he gives his views on events like Proto.in and Headstart.
Leonard Badi from Mundial Communications (a South African startup) was one of the presenters this time. He has a blog post on his product to follow up from the presentation at the event.
Another presenting company perspective, Arun of Hover.in, a company that presented this time, gives his take on the event. He's also got Vijay's "The One Percent" presentation on his blog.
Coming to the audience reactions, Vamsee has some hard criticism of the event, saying that it has lost community focus and is charging too much (i.e. become too commercial). Well we did have many long discussions on how much to charge while planning the event, and ultimately it comes down to whether the companies are getting the value for which they are paying. Finances are extremely tricky to manage for an event like Proto.in, and we constantly have to balance sponsorships and entry fees to make the event viable.
Dorai gives his views on the event in this post, saying that it was difficult not to get infected by the enthusiasm and optimism.
Soham Das has blogged about Day 1 at Proto.in and Day 2 at Proto.in.
Srinivasan, a blogger who came by bus all the way from Cuddalore to attend Proto.in takes us through the event in pictures.
Finally, here are some photos of the event put up by various people. Srinivasan's blog post has a lot of photos in it. Apart from that, Swami has put up some photos here and Vijay has uploaded more pics here.
Now that Proto.in is done, what is everyone saying about it? In this post, I'll collect various posts on the event from around the blogosphere.
To start with, head over to ReviewSaurus. Mayank, who writes the blog has reviewed a bunch of presentations with videos. So far, reviews of The Viewspaper, Antya, At One Place, Instablogs, Hover.in and Deskaway have been posted.
Next, Rajiv and friends over at WATBlog cover a number of talks from Day 1 of the event. Take a look at the overview of talks by Samir Sood, Atul Chitnis, Rajesh Jain ( and another one), and Surojit Niyogi.
Gaurabh Mathure gave a talk on Day 1 titled "Sexy. Trendy. Design. Technology." Read about his experience in this blog post.
Sujai of Sloka, one of the companies at the first Proto.in (and selected for this year's Headstart) came back to give a talk on Day 1 about how unglamorous a startup really is. In this post, he gives his views on events like Proto.in and Headstart.
Leonard Badi from Mundial Communications (a South African startup) was one of the presenters this time. He has a blog post on his product to follow up from the presentation at the event.
Another presenting company perspective, Arun of Hover.in, a company that presented this time, gives his take on the event. He's also got Vijay's "The One Percent" presentation on his blog.
Coming to the audience reactions, Vamsee has some hard criticism of the event, saying that it has lost community focus and is charging too much (i.e. become too commercial). Well we did have many long discussions on how much to charge while planning the event, and ultimately it comes down to whether the companies are getting the value for which they are paying. Finances are extremely tricky to manage for an event like Proto.in, and we constantly have to balance sponsorships and entry fees to make the event viable.
Dorai gives his views on the event in this post, saying that it was difficult not to get infected by the enthusiasm and optimism.
Soham Das has blogged about Day 1 at Proto.in and Day 2 at Proto.in.
Srinivasan, a blogger who came by bus all the way from Cuddalore to attend Proto.in takes us through the event in pictures.
Finally, here are some photos of the event put up by various people. Srinivasan's blog post has a lot of photos in it. Apart from that, Swami has put up some photos here and Vijay has uploaded more pics here.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
10 days to Proto.in
The third edition of Proto.in is almost here. Just 10 days to go. If you've been planning to attend, register fast before it closes. The agenda for the event has also been released (Download the agenda here).
The agenda is roughly modeled on the previous Proto.in event.
On Day 1 (thats the 18th), we have two tracks of talks. One track covers business and the other technology. Take a look at the agenda, because the talks look very interesting indeed. As usual, its going to be tough choosing which talks to attend.
Then move on to Day 2 (the 19th) for the core event. The twenty startups that have been selected will come on stage to present their products, followed by an open networking session.
If you attended Proto.in last time, then you already know why you should attend this time as well. If you haven't attended Proto.in before, then now is the chance to come and see what it is all about. You can register for the event here.
The agenda is roughly modeled on the previous Proto.in event.
On Day 1 (thats the 18th), we have two tracks of talks. One track covers business and the other technology. Take a look at the agenda, because the talks look very interesting indeed. As usual, its going to be tough choosing which talks to attend.
Then move on to Day 2 (the 19th) for the core event. The twenty startups that have been selected will come on stage to present their products, followed by an open networking session.
If you attended Proto.in last time, then you already know why you should attend this time as well. If you haven't attended Proto.in before, then now is the chance to come and see what it is all about. You can register for the event here.
PipesCamp features on Y! Developer Network Blog
So I get back from vacation and what do I find? Y! Developer Network has featured PipesCamp on their blog. Super cool!
Tuesday, December 25, 2007
My hack at PipesCamp HackDay
One of the coolest parts of PipesCamp on Sunday was the HackDay part of it. Okay, it wasn't a whole day, more like about three hours, but it was still fun. You can find my pipe here: MTC Mashup.
You can type a bus number in the input box on the top and it displays (or tries to display :P) the places visited by the bus on a map.
Check it out!
The raw data comes from the Chennai MTC website (Yes, they have a website). There is a section that gives the stages visited for the bus number that you enter in a form. However, the output is quite a messy bit of HTML, quite a pain to parse through. Luckily, Rabin Vincent has taken this data and put out a much cleaner bus query interface over it.
So, Rabin's site provides the raw data for the pipe. Given a bus number, we construct an appropriate URL and query Rabin's site for the bus route, then parse the HTML to extract out a list of stages that the bus goes through.
Now that we have the list of stages, the next step is to figure out the latitude and longitude of these places. For that, we used Yahoo's Geocode service. This service takes a string address and returns the latitude and longitude of the place. Once we have the lat/long coordinates of each of the stages, we send it out on a yahoo map.
Now for the hiccups:
The biggest by far is ambiguity while searching. For example, the MTC site refers to the Central Station stop simply as "Central" which when passed to the Geocoding API gets confused because a lot of things match this. At the other extreme, a bus stop like "P. Orr & Sons" does not get any hits on the Geocoding API. So, sometimes the lat/long positions can be all over the map depending on whether the Geocoding API returned the right place or not.
An obvious solution is to create a small web service that takes the names as specified on the MTC site and return the correct lat/long for that stop. So we know that Central refers to central station, and we can return the position of that stop accurately.
The other thing that I could not figure out was how to get the data on other maps. By default Y! Pipes uses Y! Maps (Worldwide) which does not have good resolution for Indian cities. However, there is a India specific Y! Maps, which has good detail for Indian cities. How do I get Pipes to output to the Y! India maps instead of the global Y! Maps? I couldn't figure that one out.
Right at the end, labsji took my mashup, downloaded the KML data and imported it into Google Earth, so that the whole route was superimposed on Google Earth and it automatically ran an animated tour between the stops.
In the end it was a fun experiment, and something I would not have done without PipesCamp. When I first started this hack, I though it would be impossible, but Y! Pipes allowed me to create the whole mashup in a few hours as a total newbie. That's pretty cool if you ask me.
You can type a bus number in the input box on the top and it displays (or tries to display :P) the places visited by the bus on a map.
Check it out!
The raw data comes from the Chennai MTC website (Yes, they have a website). There is a section that gives the stages visited for the bus number that you enter in a form. However, the output is quite a messy bit of HTML, quite a pain to parse through. Luckily, Rabin Vincent has taken this data and put out a much cleaner bus query interface over it.
So, Rabin's site provides the raw data for the pipe. Given a bus number, we construct an appropriate URL and query Rabin's site for the bus route, then parse the HTML to extract out a list of stages that the bus goes through.
Now that we have the list of stages, the next step is to figure out the latitude and longitude of these places. For that, we used Yahoo's Geocode service. This service takes a string address and returns the latitude and longitude of the place. Once we have the lat/long coordinates of each of the stages, we send it out on a yahoo map.
Now for the hiccups:
The biggest by far is ambiguity while searching. For example, the MTC site refers to the Central Station stop simply as "Central" which when passed to the Geocoding API gets confused because a lot of things match this. At the other extreme, a bus stop like "P. Orr & Sons" does not get any hits on the Geocoding API. So, sometimes the lat/long positions can be all over the map depending on whether the Geocoding API returned the right place or not.
An obvious solution is to create a small web service that takes the names as specified on the MTC site and return the correct lat/long for that stop. So we know that Central refers to central station, and we can return the position of that stop accurately.
The other thing that I could not figure out was how to get the data on other maps. By default Y! Pipes uses Y! Maps (Worldwide) which does not have good resolution for Indian cities. However, there is a India specific Y! Maps, which has good detail for Indian cities. How do I get Pipes to output to the Y! India maps instead of the global Y! Maps? I couldn't figure that one out.
Right at the end, labsji took my mashup, downloaded the KML data and imported it into Google Earth, so that the whole route was superimposed on Google Earth and it automatically ran an animated tour between the stops.
In the end it was a fun experiment, and something I would not have done without PipesCamp. When I first started this hack, I though it would be impossible, but Y! Pipes allowed me to create the whole mashup in a few hours as a total newbie. That's pretty cool if you ask me.
Friday, December 21, 2007
PipesCamp on Sunday
Hot on the heels of the AWS meet comes PipesCamp to discuess Y! Pipes.
PipesCamp is on the 23rd of December (thats the coming Sunday) from 10am to 5pm at Hotel Shan Royal, 85, Poonamallee High Road, Near Koyambedu Circle, hennai, India. (The wiki has more details, including the map to the venue)
Y! Pipes is interesting because it is an attempt to do programming visually. I remember Bosky's talk at DCamp about End-User Programming, and this is an interesting attempt by Yahoo to bring feed manipulation programming to the mainstream. With RSS becoming more popular, and mashups seemingly the in thing these days, it should be pretty interesting to see what happens at PipesCamp.
PipesCamp is on the 23rd of December (thats the coming Sunday) from 10am to 5pm at Hotel Shan Royal, 85, Poonamallee High Road, Near Koyambedu Circle, hennai, India. (The wiki has more details, including the map to the venue)
Y! Pipes is interesting because it is an attempt to do programming visually. I remember Bosky's talk at DCamp about End-User Programming, and this is an interesting attempt by Yahoo to bring feed manipulation programming to the mainstream. With RSS becoming more popular, and mashups seemingly the in thing these days, it should be pretty interesting to see what happens at PipesCamp.
Saturday, December 15, 2007
Amazon Web Services Meet: Jinesh Varia Videos Uploaded
Videos from the Amazon Web Services Meet in Chennai are now available online. Get 'em here -
The best part? Around the 2:00 minute mark in Part 1 he says that of the Indian cities, the highest intensity work seems to be done in Chennai :)
The best part? Around the 2:00 minute mark in Part 1 he says that of the Indian cities, the highest intensity work seems to be done in Chennai :)
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Amazon Web Services meet in Chennai today
Jinesh Varia, evangelist for Amazon Web Services is in Chennai today, so labsji has organised an Amazon Web Services meet. The meet will be held at the Rails Factory office in Jafferkhanpet, Ashok Nagar. It starts at 5:00 PM, but you can come earlier and hang around if you want.
The rough agenda is
For more info, check out the AWS Chennai wiki.
The rough agenda is
5:00: Welcome and Introductionand the address to the venue is
5:05 - 5:45 : Speed Geeking, networking and demos - over snacks.
5:50 - 6:30: Presentation by Jinesh Varia, and Question and Answer session.
6:31 - 7:15: Suggestions, Feedback, and Wishlist for AWS by AWS users and wannabe.
7:16 - 7:30: Discussion on next AWS Chennai meetup, closing.
RailsFactory, 9/55, Karikalan Street,(Google map here)
Jafferkhanpet, Ashok Nagar,
Chennai, TN, India -600083
[ ~1.2 Km from Ashok Pillar, 200 meters from Kasi Theatre junction.]
For more info, check out the AWS Chennai wiki.
Saturday, December 01, 2007
MindTree tries out an unconference
Since I'm maintaining the India Unconferences and Events group on upcoming, I often spend a bit of time looking for events to add. While doing that today, I came across Osmosis. Apparently, Osmosis is MindTree's annual technology festival, and its coming up in December this year - with a difference.
This year, the event is going to be held as an unconference, and they are opening it up to external participation. Which means (if I understand correctly) that anyone can attend.
Open space technology (closely related to unconferences) has often been applied in corporate environments, so it will be interesting to see how this works out.
One thing that caught my attention was this line from the site
Anyway, if anyone attends, I would be interested in knowing how everything went. The website is http://barcamp.org/osmosis and the event takes place on Saturday, 15th December 2007. Check it out and let us know what happened.
This year, the event is going to be held as an unconference, and they are opening it up to external participation. Which means (if I understand correctly) that anyone can attend.
Open space technology (closely related to unconferences) has often been applied in corporate environments, so it will be interesting to see how this works out.
One thing that caught my attention was this line from the site
Now, I'm not sure who a "MindTree Mind" is. Does it mean a general participant? Or it is a select group of people? If it is a select group of people who will decide the topics etc then it might just defeat the purpose.Osmosis final day will be an ‘unconference’ where MindTree Minds will decide the topics to be discussed. In the true spirit of an unconference, MindTree Minds will decide, organize and lead the discussions on the final day of Osmosis.
Anyway, if anyone attends, I would be interested in knowing how everything went. The website is http://barcamp.org/osmosis and the event takes place on Saturday, 15th December 2007. Check it out and let us know what happened.
Monday, November 26, 2007
Proto.in 2008 Nominations Open
Nominations for Proto 2008 are open. If you are a startup in India and would like to present at the event, head over to the website and nominate yourself. The next Proto will take place on the 18th and 19th of January 2008.
Friday, November 16, 2007
Ahmedabad Ultimate Frisbee Tournament 2007
Check out this cool YouTube video from the Ahmedabad Ultimate Frisbee Tournament 2007. Ultimate in Ahmedabad is organized by IndiCorps where they coach underprivileged youth to play Ultimate Frisbee. Check out the Ahmedabad Ultimate website for more information.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
BarCamp Kerala
Mani Karthik has a post on BarCamp Kerala on Daily SEO Blog
This is exciting news! The first and foremost BarCamp is going to be held in Kerala, this November 24th. It’s probably going to be hosted at the Technopark Auditorium, Trivandrum, (actually the venue is not decided yet.)It's pretty exciting to see BarCamps coming up all over the country. If you are in Trivandrum, think about dropping in - and then blogging about it afterwards :) The homepage for the event is here: BarCamp Kerala
Monday, November 12, 2007
Updates on Co-working space in Chennai
I had previously asked about co-working spaces in Chennai back in July. Since then, there has been some progress on this with a bunch of people opening up spaces for co-working.
Rajat, one of the guys behind Review Saurus has opened up his office for co-working. Vamsee and Bhaskar are already in the process of moving into the office with their co-workers. Rajat's office is located in Adyar.
Balaji has an office (house actually) that he would like to open up for co-working. The house has an Internet connection. For more details, you can leave him a comment on his blog.
In the comments to the previous post, Bhaskar mentions that the new STPI office is likely to have co-working space on one of the floors. In Bangalore they get cubicles, Internet, cafeteria, conference rooms and all that for Rs.5000 a month per seat, so we can expect something similar in Chennai as well.
Also in the comments to the previous post, G.Padmanabhan says that he is starting a co-working space in Nungambakkam with 6 seats. You get a cubicle, broadband Internet and access to conference rooms, printer and fax, admin services and so on. Send an email to gp [at] indelect [dot] com or call him at 94440 26983 for more details.
Kiruba is also opening up his new office space at Virugambakkam for co-working. For more details, you can get his email address and phone number via his blog.
Rajat, one of the guys behind Review Saurus has opened up his office for co-working. Vamsee and Bhaskar are already in the process of moving into the office with their co-workers. Rajat's office is located in Adyar.
Balaji has an office (house actually) that he would like to open up for co-working. The house has an Internet connection. For more details, you can leave him a comment on his blog.
In the comments to the previous post, Bhaskar mentions that the new STPI office is likely to have co-working space on one of the floors. In Bangalore they get cubicles, Internet, cafeteria, conference rooms and all that for Rs.5000 a month per seat, so we can expect something similar in Chennai as well.
Also in the comments to the previous post, G.Padmanabhan says that he is starting a co-working space in Nungambakkam with 6 seats. You get a cubicle, broadband Internet and access to conference rooms, printer and fax, admin services and so on. Send an email to gp [at] indelect [dot] com or call him at 94440 26983 for more details.
Kiruba is also opening up his new office space at Virugambakkam for co-working. For more details, you can get his email address and phone number via his blog.
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