I quickly (read as “hastily”) put together this short presentation for a discussion session at the upcoming Barcamp. The question is “With the advent of cloud computing, cloud databases, RIAs, APIs, etc., are web developers and their frameworks evolving and keeping up with the times?”

If you are interested in this discussion, please click the “I Want to Attend” button on this session’s page at the BarCamp Bangalore website.

If there is not sufficient interest, I will drop this session because there seem to be 88 sessions registered already, I have no idea how so many sessions are going to fit into just 2 days.

For more background material on this topic, see my Website Making Howto wiki page.

The weekend before last, BarCamp Bangalore 7 was held. The session that I was most looking forward to was the ‘cycling to work’ session initiated by Pradeep B V (of MapUnity fame). What made the session interesting was that people were asked to cycle to IIMB and showcase their bicycles in an outdoor session, and encourage others to take up cycling.

The idea by Pradeep to have it in the open area outside the cafeteria just after lunch was a brilliant marketing ploy, because people would just walk out of the cafeteria and then they would see all the cycles and then out of curiosity, they would come closer and end up chatting with the cyclists. It was nice to see people hopping on and going for rides just to check out the cycles.

The stars of the show were undoubtedly Vikram and Varun because of their cycling clothes and their advanced bikes which have features such as special shoes that lock into the pedals as well as ability to unhook the wheels for easy transportation.

We had a lot of fun talking to people and answering many questions from curious Barcampers and turned out to be a successful session. Among the curious people, there was also a reporter from the Bangalore Mirror. It turns out that we ended up in an article in their Sunday edition yesterday:

BANGALORE MIRROR, SEPTEMBER 21, 2008, Page 9 : Rising fuel costs, never-ending traffic jams, have made travelling quite a problem in Bangalore. So it came as no surprise that young techies, who cycle to work, created a stir at Barcamp 7 in IIM last Saturday – Renuka Phadnis

The Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore was full of activity last weekend. The auditorium was the venue for an interactive session of Headstart, a group that supports entrepreneurship in the technology sector. In the corridors and break-out spaces of the management school, there were parallel discussion sessions going on of Barcamp 7. But the one group that attracted the most attention here was the one that pedals their way to work. Varun, Vikram and Swaroop, the three directors of Ion Lab, cycle to their workplace.

And when they are stuck in any of Bangalore’s infamous traffic jams, the trio simply lift the bikes and walk out of the jam. Vikram used to cycle to his office in Bosch earlier and is still cycling to his new workplace. He cycles up to 50 km a day and has even pedaled to Mysore. The cycle he uses is a ‘Giant’ that has as an accessory shoes that swivel into the pedals of the cycle.

Varun has been cycling in Bangalore for six months after he got hooked on to it in the US.”A lot of people complain about the traffic but I like it,” he says. Once in a jam, he lifted the cycle and a guy in a car told him, “Dude, I am here stuck in this traffic and you are getting away?” He likes the fact that cycling keeps him fit too.

When you ask Swaroop if he does not find cycling a challenge in Bangalore, he says, -”Cycling isn’t, but driving a car is!” He says it is a lot safer and easier in the city. He has been cycling from Jayanagar to Domlur for the past two years.

… (see the picture for the full article)

Factual errors aside, it is a good article and really encourages non-cyclist skeptics to consider cycling. The other upshot is that the red bicycle you see on the top of the page is mine, so if I ever want to sell it, I just have to say “As featured in the Bangalore Mirror”, heh. And also, this is the first time ‘Ion Lab’ has been mentioned in the press.

Let’s reiterate over the benefits of cycling to work:

1. You do not need a separate time to exercise, because you’re cycling to work. You save one hour everyday.
2. Save on fuel costs, and in turn make the world less reliant on oil fuels.
3. Reach your workplace faster. It’s a myth that cycling is hard and slow and you’ll be late. On an average, I used to motorbike to my (ex-) Yahoo! office in Domlur in 45 minutes, but used to take 30 minutes on cycle.
4. Don’t get stuck in traffic jams. Just lift your cycle and push it along on the sidewalk. (Please do not cycle on the sidewalk, you’ll be annoying pedestrians)
5. A good exercise before you reach your workplace will really pump up the endorphins and put you in a positive mood to get lot of work done throughout the day.
6. And you’ll be a lot healthier!

Convinced yet?

(more…)

Day 2 of Barcamp Bangalore No. 6 (Apr 20 Sun) started off on a pleasant note because I just had to stop and admire the greenery of the IIMB campus.

Had an impromptu discussion on development on Nokia Phones with Ashwin and another person who worked in Nokia. Surprised to hear that it costs so much!

Then, attended a session on “Pattern Labs” who are trying to create a better knowledge base for GAP, a conglomerate of NGOs for sustainable development. What they’re trying to achieve was quite admirable and definitely needed, but for the life of me, I just couldn’t understand what they’re trying to do in this Pattern Labs and what kind of software they’re trying to develop.

This was followed by a 5-10 min discussion on Web 2.0 for K-12 education, it was interesting to note that there were few success stories where kids used a wiki to collaboratively write a poem using the “diamond pattern” they teach in school and were benefited by this approach.

Then Rajiv Poddar initiated a discussion on the legal status of VoIP in India and why there should be a correction. Basically, VoIP calls cannot reach a PSTN/PLMN i.e. landline or mobile phones in India. Why? Because it will hurt VSNL’s revenues. An equally relevant issue is that VSNL is the only gateway in India trying to control all traffic for no real reason. But why is VoIP important? Because it makes phone calls damn inexpensive and there are many innovations that can be done around it – right from system integration to enabling live voice discussions for a website, all at a low cost.

Rajiv equated this situation to the telephony space – the government was afraid that BSNL won’t make money, but once the space was opened, everyone now knows the story of the rapid growth of telephony and communication in India, after all India is the fastest growing market. It did more good than harm.

Previously I had known that there are some legal issues with VoIP but had never ventured to learn about it until I happened to walk into this session. A group called Voice of VoIP was created on the spot to take the discussion forward and see if something can be done about it.

Then I went into a session on Scoping, Closures and Objects in Javascript. The speaker Venkatesh Choppella was a professor at IIIT, Trivandrum and held a Ph.D in computer languages. I was mighty impressed that there are such lecturers out there! Interestingly, he teaches JavaScript as the first language for some of his classes at his university. I learned a bit about JavaScript and language theory.

Then, Vinayak Hegde had an interesting session on High performance websites. Again, the crowd had a lively discussion on tips and tricks right from something called “CSS sprites” to using YSlow, Minify, Expires Headers, ETags, and so on.

And in between all this, I met many people. In fact, when we were mingling, few of us decided to go to the Coffee Day outlet in the next building to get something cold. It was such a sultry weather. And there we found, Shourya and another college student (Jayanth?) playing guitars and singing Def Leppard songs!

There were some amazingly funny and insightful discussions going on as well, many of which I can’t write here, but I’ll especially remember Kushal Das’ stories. I never thought someone had the guts to pull off giving an Intel 865 motherboard to his girlfriend on Valentine’s Day! And they even have fights over GCC. Wow, that’s like a geek’s dream, right? Anyway, I wish him all the best, hope they’re together for a long time and more.

The day ended with a feedback session on the good, bad and ugly of Barcamp. Most people had suggestions and cribs but they said they got used to it once they understood the idea of how Barcamps work – it’s meant to be not organized and scheduled properly. Things should happen on-the-fly. And again, people asked for video archives of the sessions because they missed many due to the parallel tracks. Simple answer – get a video camera and record. If 4-5 people can volunteer, the problem is solved. The real problem is not enough people willing to do these things. Barcamp works only when everyone pitches in, whether you are initiating a session, volunteering or at least putting your name on the wiki.

There were more discussions, but in the end people agreed that the current format is great and nothing needs to be changed for number 7.

Bottom line: Adjust maadi. Don’t make it a “conference”!

There are only a few things that can get me high – running, passionate techie discussions, meeting new people, and interesting and insightful conversations. I had a good dose of all of these in two days, so BCB6 was simply well-spent time for me. And it looks like many other campers feel the same way as well.

P.S. If you want to be updated on when’s the next barcamp, just follow the mailing list and the website.

For the uninitiated, Barcamp is an “unconference” which means its a place where people meet, but all the usual rules of a conference do not apply (hence the ‘un’). The best part about any conference is usually the hallway crowds where people say hi and end up engaging in some of the most passionate discussions. Imagine if a conference had only hallway discussions as an agenda – You want to discuss something? Great, go write the topic on a post-it and stick it on the wall in the available time slots. That’s what Barcamp is.

Barcamp actually started off as a response to the FOOcamp i.e. Friends of O’Reilly Camp to which only the crème de la crème were invited and others had to stay out. So people like Tantek and Messina got together and decided to make a new “for the people, by the people” format which was the exact opposite of FOOcamp. And since programming has had “foo” and “bar” as standard variable names in examples, they called it “barcamp”. That’s right, it’s got nothing to do with alcohol. Now, Barcamps have become a worldwide phenomenon.

Day 1 of Barcamp Bangalore #6 (Apr 19 Sat) started with an introduction session where everyone stands up and explains what sessions they’ll be initiating at which room or “dari” and at what time. This itself was an indicator of how the next 2 days were going to be.

Since we techies are traditionally not used to getting up early on time, the sessions started half an hour late. In any case, the whole crowd started mingling.

The first actual session I attended was Kaashif demonstrating self-defence. Seriously. He explained that he has had unsavoury experiences at places like Marathahalli at night and its important to know how to defend yourself, not that you should go looking for trouble. He explained things well right from what are your opponents weak points regardless of their size to the three basic steps – do the defend action, do the ’shout/cry’ that happens when you hit with force, and then run.

For step 3, people had to come to our running discussion. That went better than I would have expected.

The rest of the day was of two parts for me – fleeting in and out of discussions and meeting people.

One thing about Barcamp is the no-holds-barred discussions. Diplomacy has no place here, let’s talk what you are really thinking. For example, there are many startups showcasing their products and taking feedback. One such startup that I witnessed was LifeInLines. The crowd, sorry to say this, literally murdered them. They were like “This is just twitter minus rss plus privacy controls. Is there anything else?” and the guys had a hard time convincing them of the value in their website. It reminded me of the recent discussion on Aren’t There Real Problems To Solve? Any way, I think this is the perfect reason why startups should showcase at Barcamp – you’re not going to get more brutal and more honest feedback than here.

Then I met a lot of interesting people. For example, Anand Bora who has an interesting passion called “mathematical art”. Wow, I didn’t even know such stuff existed. While we were talking, he scribbled something on a box and showed me, it was my name ‘Swaroop’. Then he turned the box around, it still read ‘Swaroop’! Wow again. Apparently, they’re called ambigrams and he’s done many of these. We had a long discussion about life and thoughts and where we’ll be in 5 years. And a few hours before that, I didn’t even know him.

Then bumped into people like Vid Ayer, Arun and a guy from Cisco, and they asked me about my ’startup’ experiences. This topic was a story by itself, so I’ll write about it separately. What was interesting, was putting faces to names. I’ve seen the name ‘Vid Ayer’ on mailing lists and blogs, but now I get to actually meet the person. This trend continued in the twitter meetup as well.

I think the ‘dari’ idea was awesome – just a bunch of carpets where people can sit and gather around. The discussions varied from “The Great Dating Session” to “Lessons from Kamasutra, not that kind” to writing Mozilla applications. Heck, even the sessions varied from raising awareness of the girl child issue to asynchronous i/o.

The only problem is that sometimes there were no topics of interest to me and sometimes there were 3 things happening in parallel and I wanted to attend all of them. But, yeah, that’s a problem that can’t be solved.

The whole day was fun. I couldn’t wait to get back to Day 2.

One fine day, I was running by myself. It was a few weeks before Barcamp Bangalore 5. I got an idea that I should talk about a non-techie topic at Barcamp since I’ve been giving tech talks for the past few years and I wanted a change of pace. I brainstormed many ideas on the reason for the talk, what to say and how to explain, etc. all during that one run.

Unfortunately I couldn’t attend BCB5. But I stored the notes in a safe place. And when BCB6 was announced, I wanted to be sure to talk this time around.

A few weeks back, Ramjee called me and asked whether we can talk about running. I smiled and thought to myself “Great minds think alike”. Or at least “Runners think alike”.

So I made a ppt and we landed at Barcamp on Saturday morning. We had never discussed the presentation. And we were going to give a session on it. Truly unconference style.

Note: The slides below have been modified to make it useful for a web audience. It has a lot more text now.

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Barcamp crowds are very inquisitive and so we didn’t actually go past half the slides, which is actually a good thing. Instead, we discussed a wide range of things about running right from finding good places to run to trouble with dogs.

In spite of the delays causing us to start at 12:45 (which means almost lunch time) the discussion went on till 1:45 and 90% of the 30-40 odd crowd were present till the end. When we went to grab what was left of lunch, lot of people asked us questions including how to avoid knee pain (tip: it’s the shoes). Since questions are always a good sign, I think it was a successful discussion.

We both still consider ourselves amateurs at running but at the end of the day its an activity we like and Barcamp is a perfect platform to talk about our passions.

Oh, and if you’re still not a believer, I’ll end with a quote:

Games require skill. Running requires endurance, character, pride, physical strength, and mental toughness. Running is a test, not a game. A test of faith, belief, will, and trust in ones self. So hardcore that it needs a category all to itself to define the pain. When game players criticize, it’s because they aren’t willing to understand, not because they’re stronger. Running is more than a sport; it’s a lifestyle. If you have to ask us why we run, you’ll never understand, so just accept.

– Jessica Propst

Update: SlideShare decided to make it a Barcamp spotlight presentation:

The online slides has had 1274 views and 116 downloads as of this writing (2008-05-04 Sun 10:04 PM).