Proto.in Registrations Open

Registrations for the fifth edition of Proto.in are open! You can register here - http://proto.in/register/

Proto.in is an event that aims to bring together startups, investors and industry people in one location. Its a two day event. The first day will have a number of talks on startups. Usually these cover topics like funding, business plans, bootstrapping and so on. There are also technology talks. The second day has some selected startups presenting their product followed by an open house where you can interact with startups and investors.

This event is the fifth edition of Proto.in. The first three editions were in Chennai, the fourth in Delhi. This edition is going to be held in Bangalore, so its pretty convenient for people from Chennai to attend.

Find out more about Proto.in here - http://proto.in/

The cost of registrations is Rs.750 for one person or Rs.1000 for two.

Again, this is the URL - http://proto.in/register/

Chennai OCC November Meet: New venue - Ascendas Food Court

The November meetup of the Chennai OpenCoffee Club is tomorrow. There is a change in venue this month. We are meeting at the Ascendas food court at 3pm instead of the usual location at Amethyst. If you have never been to this food court, then the website has a handy map with the location of the venue. Basically it at Taramani, behind IIT and Tidel Park.

Now if you are unsure of what the Chennai OpenCoffee Club actually is, its a place for entrepreneurs, would-be entrepreneurs, and everyone else involved with startups to meet informally (that means no need to join a group or pre-register and no entry fees). We have a meet on the first Sunday of the month. The meetups are open to everyone. Join the Chennai OCC website to get an email notification before every meetup.

On the topic of the OCC website, I just wanted to point out the Chennai OCC website has a forum, so do join in the coversations.

Plus a new feature that is available is that all discussions on the website are now available as an RSS feed — Click here for the Chennai OCC forum feed — so its a really good idea to subscribe to the feed in your favourite blog reader. That will allow you to keep track of the Chennai OCC forums and, if you have joined the website, you can then join in the coversation.

Must watch videos from DjangoCon

I was recently going through some of the videos from DjangoCon. Two must watch videos are Cal Henderson's talk titled "Why I Hate Django" and Mark Ramm's talk "A Turbogears guy on what Django should learn from Zope". Both Cal and Mark bring in interesting outside perspectives that I hadn't really considered before. Both talks run around an hour each and are well worth watching if you have the time.

Cave Story coming to WiiWare

The most exciting news I've heard in a while. Cave Story is coming to the Wii through its online WiiWare distribution channel. Cave Story is a totally kickass game. It's actually a free game on the PC (Get it here). I played it earlier this year and it was really awesome (Cave Story Review). And it's free. So I can hear you ask - if I've already played it, and its free on the PC, why pay to play the same game again? Hmm, good question. Because its an awesome game? Plus a good way to give back and support the time put into the free game. And there is going to be new content not found in the free game. Can't wait for this one.

Choosing a scripting language

CIO magazine has an article titled You Used THAT Programming Language to Write WHAT? They took five "scripting" languages — Ruby, Python, Javascript, PHP and Perl — and then get Zed Shaw, Martin Aspeli, Michael Morrison, Kenneth Hess and James Turner to write about what kind of applications the language is good for, and where you are better using another language. Check it out.

Github and Webfaction rock

Just wanted to chip in and say that Github rocks. And also Webfaction.

India Unconferences and Events

Chennai OCC isn't the only thing to turn one year old this month. India Unconferences and Events, a group to track unconferences and community events in India also turns one.

Over the last year, the number of community events has increased by leaps and bounds. There is an event happening somewhere almost every week. Unfortunately, it isn't always easy to track these events. Often, you only find out about the event when someone blogs about it after it's over :(

Thats where the India Unconferences and Events group helps. This group tracks tech and startup community events happening around the country. Over the last year, this group has tracked more than 120 events around the country (check out current events and past events tracked by the group)

Once you join this group (you just need a Yahoo ID to sign up), you can subscribe to the RSS feed to be notified of events as they are added. It's an open group, so if you come across a tech community event that is not in the group, you can add it to the group.

The problem with ebooks

The problem with ebooks is that its too easy to lose them. I recently bought an ebook, and now I have no idea in which directly I put it and I can't find it. Rather more difficult to lose a paper book. How do you solve this problem? Do you keep burning ebooks to a CD after you buy them? Give me some ideas.

From Good To Great ... To Below Average

There is an interesting post on the Freakonomics blog titled From Good to Great … to Below Average. The post talks about how many of the companies profiled in the book are not all that spectacular today.

Ironically, I began reading the book on the very same day that one of the eleven “good to great” companies, Fannie Mae, made the headlines of the business pages. It looks like Fannie Mae is going to need to be bailed out by the federal government. If you had bought Fannie Mae stock around the time Good to Great was published, you would have lost over 80 percent of your initial investment.

And at the end:

What does this all mean? In one sense, not much.

These business books are mostly backward-looking: what have companies done that has made them successful? The future is always hard to predict, and understanding the past is valuable; on the other hand, the implicit message of these business books is that the principles that these companies use not only have made them good in the past, but position them for continued success.

Read the whole post here.

Designing Sustainable Startups

via Sampad: Niraj Bhatnagar's presentation at Barcamp Delhi 4.

Designing Sustainable Startups

view presentation (tags: entrepreneurship sustainable business social)

Funny gmail bug

Spotted this in my Inbox today. Although it says -64 mails, all the mails are there, so I suppose its kind of a harmless bug.

Chennai OpenCoffee Club Turns One!

It's hard to believe but the Chennai OpenCoffee Club will soon turn 1 year old. Vaidhy and I started it with the first meetup on the 5th of August, 2007 at Subway (Read about it here). Since then, OCC has spread out to Bangalore, Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, Delhi, Noida and Kolkata (See the links at the bottom of this post to join these OCC groups).

What is the Chennai OpenCoffee Club?

Here's the blurb from the website

The Chennai OpenCoffee Club is a place for people involved in the startup ecosystem to meet in an informal setting. Anyone involved with startups - entrepreneurs, developers, lawyers, investors - is invited to come and join the conversation.

Chennai OpenCoffee Club Links

• Chennai OpenCoffee Club Online
• The original announcement
• How to organise an OpenCoffee Club in your city

Media Coverage

• Indian Express covers the first Chennai OCC meet
• Chennai OCC is featured in a Mint article covering the startup scene in Chennai
• April meet of Chennai OCC featured on Mint
• June meet of Chennai OCC featured on Mint
• Chennai OCC featured in Times of India
• Chennai OCC featured in Ergo (PDF version here, Page 2)
• Chennai OCC in Hindu Business Line

OpenCoffee Clubs In Other Cities

If you are from another city or traveling, you might want to catch up with one of these other OpenCoffee Clubs

• Worldwide OCC website
• Bangalore OpenCoffee Club
• Pune OpenCoffee Club
• Mumbai OpenCoffee Club
• Hyderabad OpenCoffee Club
• Delhi OpenCoffee Club
• Noida OpenCoffee Club
• Kolkata OpenCoffee Club

Book Review: Johnny Bunko

I just finished reading Johnny Bunko by Dan Pink. This book is aimed at being a career guide to students fresh out of school and college or for those new to the workplace. The first thing that you'll notice is that the whole book is in manga format which I really enjoyed. It was pretty innovative to try something different to reach the audience. Although the book is subtitled a career guide, it isn't one at all, more like a general life guide. The whole book is pretty short — it only took me about half an hour to read. Thats both an advantage and a disadvantage. On the one hand, it is a bit light on content, making only six points. On the other hand, it makes it easy to read and finish, unlike other books which go on for far too long. Overall, I think it works.

114 Execs leave Yahoo!

Yahoo's troubles seem to be making all the wrong kind of news. Now TechCrunch has published a list of execs who have left Yahoo. Apparently more than a hundred since the start of last year. Thats a lot!

Screencast: Using Amazon S3 with Django

Many thanks to Balaji and CSS for organising the second Amazon Web Services meet in Chennai and to Jinesh for being able to make it. (Also check out my live blog of the event on twitter, starting here)

As a part of this meet, I had prepared a demo showing how to build a simple gallery application using Django and Amazon's S3 service. I've recorded it as a screencast and uploaded it on ShowMeDo. It's really simple to use S3 with Django, so take a look.

This screencast uses the Boto python library for accessing AWS.

Get the Flash Player to see this movie.

This video originally comes from here at ShowMeDo from the Python category.