meet

A collection of 45 posts

Business

How to get funding from Government of India

I will be speaking in a panel at the HeadStart Conference, Hyderabad today regarding what is the funding that was granted by the Govt. of India to my ex-startup, and how you can apply. I converted the content I had prepared into for-web-only slides for your perusal:

General

The magic of foss.in

Why do I keep going back to foss.in? Because I’m the kind of person who needs extrinsic motivation. That’s why having a good circle of friends with a positive attitude is so important to me. And that’s why the foss.in community is so important to

Business

What I learned at NASSCOM Product Conclave 2009

1. There are not enough good problems that tech startups are working on and there seems to be no shortage of funds, platforms and ecosystem partners willing to help startups. The ecosystem is hungry for successes. 2. Product Management skills are the need of the hour, NOT talks about talks

General

Barcamp Bangalore 8

I had a great time at BCB8. Even though I had ranted previously on the tech focus this time, the planners made it clear that all topics are welcome and Barcampers kept the same familiar atmosphere going. To be honest, I don’t go to Barcamp for the sessions per

Tech

Let's talk about future of webapp development at BCB8

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?” Are WebDevs and their Frameworks

Business

Product for the future

My favorite session at proto.in 5th edition was by Atul Chitnis who reinforced the basics of business. He made one remark which seems obvious but something that we don’t put in practice: “Today is history. Build for the future so that your product can be ready just in

India

Cycling To Work at Barcamp Bangalore 7

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

Business

proto.in Edition 4 at Delhi

I attended the proto.in 4 conference last week (held at the beautiful IIT Delhi campus) and had a very productive and thought-provoking time. Day 1 was the fastrack “startup school” sessions. The keynote session was Kiran Karnik, ex-President of NASSCOM, who pointed out that this “recession” is not a

Business

Smart Techie Startup City

Yesterday, I attended The Smart Techie Startup City event. It was intended as a showcase of startups as well as for learning/sharing/mentoring. I had taken some notes during the day. As I was expanding it into a blog post, I realized I was just adding filler words which

General

Barcamp Bangalore 6 Day 2

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

General

Barcamp Bangalore 6 Day 1

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

Running

Why You Should Run

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.

India

Web Innovation 2007 Day 2

Yesterday, I attended Day 2 of the Web Innovation 2007 conference. The irony to note is that the conference website is so NOT Web 2.0. For example, where are the slides that people can download? These guys can learn a thing or two from the foss.in website and

Tech

Web Innovation 2007 Day 1

Yesterday, I attended Day 1 of the Web Innovation 2007 conference. The first half of the day was quite useful, but the latter half turned out to be pure marketing pitches by the sponsors. First and foremost, I think the title of the conference is a misnomer. Although it says

Design

Hack Day videos

Kamla Bhatt has been tracking the Hack Day India and posting many interviews and videos. The videos include the demos by the hackers, and here’s the video where we present (from minutes 03:10 to 05:09) : Update : And a mention in the Financial Express :)

India

Hack Day India

I was at Yahoo! Open Hack Day at Bangalore on Friday and Saturday. 24 hours of hacking, meeting lots of old friends, and sarcasm unlimited. It doesn’t get better than this. * 2007-10-05 Fri 02:30 PM * Arrived at Taj. * Registered myself, got the schwag * Met Raghu and discussed the

Tech

Why students and open source?

Two days before the BMS College Information Science Department Fest called “Genesis 2007”, I received an email from a couple of students asking me to talk about “introduction to open source”. Apparently, they were frantically looking for a speaker. Since I’m not the right person for this, I agreed

Business

OpenCoffeeClub 2

Note: I no longer work with IonLab since Nov 12 of 2009. Yesterday morning, I dropped in on the OpenCoffeeClub Bangalore, 2nd edition. It’s supposed to be a place where people interested in entrepreneurship show up, have coffee together and discuss. The theme of the meet was marketing. There

Business

proto.in

I was fortunate to attend proto.in in Chennai on Sunday. What was it all about? It’s about startups in India. It was the opportunity for an Indian entrepreneur to showcase his/her ideas and business plans, to look for funding, people to work with, partners or simply grab

Books

Bangalore Book Festival

I managed to catch the last day of the Bangalore Book Festival 2006 – I was surprised to see the number of people thronging the fair! It was truly a family affair – and we bought nearly a dozen books ranging from spiritual to tech to comics to Sherlock Holmes :). I’m

India

Keep ideating

Yesterday night, I met St. John Goldfinger and Paul Jenkins for dinner. They are technology entrepreneurs based in the UK. They were in Bangalore for the EU-Karnataka Asia IT Enterprise 2006 Conference (quite a mouthful) basically looking out for companies to collaborate with on many of their projects. They wanted

General

Linux Can!

Watch the Linux Can! video (I took yesterday night) now! I just can’t get that tune out of my head … Update : The video is now available on Google Video.

General

foss.in day 4

Yesterday was such a long and awesome day. The day started with me missing Taj’s talk on Entropy and I’m still kicking myself for that one. I attended Gora’s talk on IndLinux efforts and I got to know about the various efforts in localization and translations going

General

foss.in day 3

Today, the keynote address was by Andrew Cowie on Inside|Outside, and it was a brilliant talk. Cowie is a very animated and fun person. The talk was about how people are on the inside or outside of the community and what it takes to cross over. He gave various

A Byte of Python

foss.in day 2

Today morning, the first session was a Linux Kernel roadmap by Jonathan Corbet. Although I’ve never been a kernel-level guy, the talk was interesting and he clearly explained how features have been added and improved over the various versions, and how the development process has improved and become more