BCB3 - Day One

31st of April and I got up early on a Saturday and got ready to go to Barcamp Bangalore 3. I was supposed to pick Jai on my way but he was getting late so I headed off to the venue to be there on time. The registration process was pretty fast and the crowd was not that bad as I expected. I expected around 500 people as per the registrations but it didn’t seem that many people turned up. Sid was already there with Abhijit and after the customary name stickers and mug shots we headed towards the auditorium for the introduction talk.

I was apprehensive about the idea of live twittering coz I was not confident that my laptop will pickup the WIFI signals and also if the battery will sustain charge for the whole day. As we entered the audi I decided to check out the wifi and it was not connecting and I was so disappointed. Then I came to know that there was no connection there. The intro started at 10 AM sharp by Kiruba giving a short talk about Barcamps and the Unconference model followed by the speaker intros.

10.30 AM sharp the sessions kick started and I went to the “Camera phone, You Tube and Skype” session presented by Deepak. Rajan was assisting him with the equipments. They were talking about the major possibilities of using camera phones in more meaningful ways. They also showed their product V/go (or is it Wgo?) using which they were shooting camera phone video of the session real time and broadcasting it over Skype. They had to end it abruptly as the time ran out as the other guys barged in. I think the speakers should really concentrate on making their presentation real short and crisp and also give time for Q&A. All were so overwhelmed with their product/tehnology.

From there we ran to the “Risk Management to beat stress” session by Payal. She just said the regular known stuff, I think it was more of a sales pitch which again she couldn’t really do well. She started off saying risk management is better than stress management but then there was nothing new. Or may be time didn’t allow her to finish. She said her organization will deal stress at the root level, etc etc. Didn’t convince the crowd I think. It was boring for me. Some one said "Payal is good looking and thats about it".

I had a peek at the Activ Mobs guys session which was jam packed on the way to Sujai's talk. Sujai’s “Future of Indian telephony” which was again very informative. I really loved his session at Barcamp 2 on WiMax. He again broke some myths and gave some insights and facts into broadband and mobile scene in India. He was mobbed by questions and he was patiently giving smart answers to all that. 2008 is going to be the boom time for broadband is what Sujai says. I hope so; I’m still waiting for BSNL to give me the broadband connection.

Jai came in at this time and he said “Mobile Internet session sucked. The presenter was late and the topic he started was boring. The crowd was impatient and the vocabulary was deplorable”

Lunch time and I was hungry like anything coz of the skipped breakfast. The food sucked big time; just made sure to eat something to beat the hunger. Nothing like the awesome Barcamp 2 lunch.

Spent time with Sowmya Karmally, talked about the work she is doing and also about the talk she is going to give. After lunch we had a good half an hour time so I went and tagged along with Muthu. He was very kind enough to introduce me to all his friends. I freaked out giving out my newly printed biz cards. Some loved the Gaping Void cartoon on the back of my card. Mahesh Shantaram wanted to take a picture of mine against the pink flowers coz he liked my pink mango print Allen Solly. RKVS Raman of CDAC even invited me to give a session for his students. I was thrilled. All this time Sid was busy setting up WIFI connections for other laptops.

Post lunch Muthu and I went to “Hadoop and Yahoo Search” session and oops it was a wrong choice. I didn’t understand a word what they talked about. Wasted a good half an hour there just by staring at people.

Then went to “Zook Mobile Search” session. Zook is searching by sending SMS and the users get Interactive responses by asking questions for refining search results. Didn’t interest me again. (I think it was coz of the food) :-) I again missed Sowmya’s session coz the Zook thing took a way long time to wrap up. She asked us why we were not there; Sorry Sowmya.

Jai joined us again and said “About the ‘Virtual Learning’ session.... I didn’t learn much. Only learnt that there is a software called ‘Open Index’ and that it is sort of like an LMS”

We collected our free Barcamp T shirts and headed towards Navjot's session on “Mobile Web Standards”. Was a very interesting and interactive session, but not much informative. We already knew things which he talked about.

Then the last one for the day, Savita Kini’s “Are we ready to move from services to products”. This one was really interesting and informative. People were very much a part of the discussion - wild comments, jokes, constructive points, some went berserk over their points too…. But Savita has amazing capability to bring the audience to her control. A ssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhh from her really worked wonders for the ones who were shouting. She also gave a tough look to a guy who was talking over the phone. A really good session and well time managed. Very constructive discussion and Savita really knew her job well. Sujai, Rajeev Poddar, Rajan, Vidya and another two guys were the ones who really drove the discussion. Some of Sujai’s wisecracks were really good ones. “One needs to have balls to go for product development” and “If you want to get married soon join Infosys” were the pick of the lot.

Met a lot of people at the hallway; the usual suspects and also new guys. Kiruba, Raman and Selva from CDAC, Akshat and Sidu of Activ Mobs, Shiv Prashant Sood of Huawei, Amir from ThoughtWorks (ThoughtWork guys are people to watch out for, I think they are doing some real good work), Amit bhargava of Cognizant, Param, Rajan, Rajeev, Sujai, Mahesh Shantaram and many other guys. Amit Pande was missing. Live twittering was a success more than I thought it would be. Sid, Abhijit and Jai pitched in to help me in making it work. That was so sweet of them. We got Barcamp as a follower for the BCB3 timeline and other guys too. Hope the public will check out the timeline tonight and will follow more closely tomorrow. Some of the rooms didn’t have power plugs so my computer went out of power now and then but I somehow managed it and I would like to call it power management :-). The overall experience was very good and I’m looking forward for the second day.

Btw my laptop is too heavy and I’m realizing it now as I’ve got a shoulder pain. No not the right one. :-)

Pictures courtesy Sid, Jace and Mahesh Shantaram.

Live Twitter from Barcamp Bangalore 3

As we all know that Twitter is super usable as a live blogging tool, I have created a Twitter account for BCB3. I'll be live (micro) blogging (twittering) from the event in this space. Keep watching the space if you want to know whats happening at Barcamp Bangalore 3 in real time.

Twitter enthusiasts can add BCB3 as a friend in their Twitter ids and their posts will be featured in the BCB3 friends timeline. Or if you want to join me in the BCB3 live blog, please contact me with your details and i will tell you how to do that.

XML feeds for those who want to keep track of the BCB3 action:

1. Main Timeline
2. Timeline with friends

Be there

PS: Also keep watching Twitter Vision to see how (world) famous is BCB3 going to be :-)

Twitter Vision

There is so much of talk happening on Twitter everywhere, both in favour and against. One of the best things about Twitter is it's API and there are lots of mashups coming up using it. This guy David Troy has made Twitter Map , Twitter Search and Twitter Vision.

Twitter Map

Google Maps and Twitter mashed up. Search for a Twitter user and it shows the location of the user on the map or search for a location and it shows all the twitters from that location. Good to find random friends from your locality.

Twitter Search

Simple search for twitters from a specific user.

Twitter Vision

The coolest of the lot. This one randomly broadcasts the twitters that are coming in on Google map. Its like watching tv. Its basically the Twitter public time line refurbished. A real time killer.

Coming Soon - Barcamp Bangalore 3

Barcamp Bangalore 3 is around the corner and it's happening on 31st March and 1st April at IIM Bangalore. The main area of talks will be about Internet, Mobiles and also the impact of technology on society and our lives.

I was there on the second day of Barcamp Bangalore 2 and it was a very nice experience. I could attend a lot of interesting talks, meet people outside at the hallways, getting introduced to geeks and also have some awesome food. I was testing the waters last time as it was my first time attending an unconference and I also missed the first day when the turnout was much more.

This time I'm intending to do some serious networking with some more people; I want to meet Kiruba and Sowmya Karmally (I missed her session last time but was there for her pulao recipe) in person even though I know them from the blogosphere. I will be meeting Muthu (I'm going to meet him for the second time) and refresh my acquaintance with Amit Pande of Oracle. I would also look for people from ThoughtWorks who presented some awesome stuff at BarCamp Bangalore 2. May be I will tag along with Muthu to get introduced to his friends :-).

One more attraction is the IIMB campus where the event is going to happen. Its again my first time to be in IIM campus and I'm looking forward to it.

Let me know if anyone of you reading this is also going to be there, will be glad to catch up. See you there.

The Switch Board Lesson

Whenever someone tries to explain me about something new, I ask him/her to give out examples. It's relatively easy for me to pick up that new idea if I could relate it to an analogy which I’m familiar with. It could be anything, anything out of life. There are very few people who can do this well. It all depends on the analogy they gives out, if gone wrong will screw up the whole understanding. I can end up getting wrong knowledge/information.

Many times examples have helped me in picking up new technology ideas, as I’m not a techie. I relate technology to the real life happenings and I understand it perfectly in and out. My Business Management teacher in college was the best in giving examples and may be that’s why I was good at the subject. He used to explain each and every fundas of Management using real life examples and my brain registered it quickly. When I started out my career, my colleagues who used to teach me the work, used to explain things to me using examples. And may be that’s the reason I got all the basics right, right from the initial days.

And now I’m working as a User Experience Designer and most of the time I’m explaining and trying to sell my ideas to others about how to crack a design requirement. The trick of explaining everything using an interesting analogy or metaphor has helped me convincing my co workers about ideas I have visualized. Also to my friends when they ask me doubts varying from, what’s web 2.0, how does Google work, how to make use of blogs to achieve their goals, why their parents are not able to see the picture they sent as an attachment mail, to xhtml/css lessons.



My father always asks me about the kind of job I’m doing. Whenever I tell him I’m a software user experience designer he never gets it. Once I tried to explain to him in detail what I do for a living. I showed him this switch board in my kitchen and asked him to guess which switch belongs to which plug. Even though he got the answer right, he admitted that he had to analyze a way bit too much to get it right. Even though the switchboard looks simple, according to me it would have been simpler if the ‘switch and plug’ association was a bit more obvious. One of the switches on the board controls my refrigerator’s connection and whenever people go into the kitchen I have to show them the switch and warn not to switch it off. It simply means the switch board is not intuitive enough for the user to guess what happens when he/she puts off a switch. That’s called bad user experience. To make the switch board better usable and intuitive is good user experience and that’s what exactly I do when I design software applications. I make it intuitive, not only useful but also usable and also make it aesthetically appealing. Overall my job is to improve the user’s experience. My dad got it instantly.