Barcamp Hyderabad2: Postmortem + DeadBlogging

Barcamp happened on the 15th July Saturday in Microsoft Campus. The numbers looked sparse to me initially but then when the final results were out, it came up to 150+ , which is huge, to say simply of it. Live blogging was missing again, but I did capture quite a bit of notes; and so here it goes for you people. So instead of LiveBlogging what you will find here is DeadBlogging interspersed with my postmortem notes and thoughts.

The initial talk was by Ramesh Loganathan, but I could only attend the later half of it, courtesy waiting at the reception desk to sign up people. Any case the last few things I could capture. Basically the talk was about GPS in India and the opportunities available.

* Ericsson has come up with a Standard Mobile Server

* EDR is in the GSM phone but you cannot get the latitude longitude locations. Ramesh’s team had earlier worked on a location based application but since the lat and long were not available, the product had to be scrapped

Atul Chitnis / Geodesic / 11:32 am – 12:10 pm / http://www.atulchitnis.net

Atuls presentation was minimalist zen(mostly seen in steve jobs presentations) type presentation with the typewriter font (lessig style). It was done in Fedora Core 4 PC; which makes it partially politically incorrect.

The main theme of the presentation was about how the PCs are not really mainstream.

* Computers are a misnomer in the present world. A very if not no part of the computer time is used for computing by the users.
* PC Users are a minotity. Most people dont use a PC. They neither have the means, nor the infrastructure, its financially infeasible, and mainly because people DONT WANT TO.
* ‘Form factor’ of the PC
* All mobile devices must be ‘Sized to be carried’. iPod, Walkman, Mobile
* You dont go to them, they do with you.
* We wait for the PC to boot up. And then do what the notebook wants us to do with it, not what we want to.
* The obvious analogy comes to land line phone <-> cell phone.
* Big screens are not exactly a need of the people. When it finally comes to viewing, perspective comes into play. A huge grand father clock 20 feet away is as effective as your wrist watch.
* Look at iPod, its a single function device where all we need is a start, stop, pause, skip next, skip front buttons. All are buttons are expendible.
* But mobile devices are too small to use
* Keyboard is only for PC. Not for all applications. Only 5% of time is used in typing. There needs to be a change in application
* browser on palm – is unusable by users
* the information that needs to appear is the ones that are important to the user and that is visible to them
* ‘Not all’ information. Only ‘design’ information
* Desired information is to be showed
* Goals of Mobile
– stay informed
– to reach and to re reach
– as a phone
– media player
– anytime
– anywhere

I disagree with Atuls talk per se; but I look at the problem differently. The problem is not as much with computers as it is with their design. The whole interface that is provided to the computer are the monitor, keyboard and mouse. And hence ‘any’ applications UI is centered around this same interfaces available. Of these only the keyboard and mouse are capable of taking feedback. Whats needed primarily is a rethink of this design and interfacing of computers. iPod is a great single function device, but again a single function device is not a solution to the design problem. PC is now a consolidation of many single function devices which can again intercommunicate with each other. The mobile too is not at all a solution to any of my problems. Mobility is a great advantage here; but once the battery runs out; the use is debatable. Again, for recharging i need to carry the device specific charger equipment. On the other hand for a pc, the plug points are available everywhere! Im not yet convinced that my experience is the same on big screen and on a small pocket media player. Having seen a movie in imax and then on a small screen, i disagree. I think its time to look at bettering the human computer interaction experience than that of saying the pcs are themselves obsolete.

Farhan / spokn /12:15pm – 12:50pm / farhan AT spokn DOT com

* All our communication on mobile is bursty in nature
* The mobile comes in the flow of your work
* Taken from a personal example, having a bad interface can literally kill you
* UIs on mobile phones are extremely important
* Have to be extremely robust
* Spokn have create a new LTP (Light Telephone Protocol) which has no dynamic allocations
* Number of PCs are 350 million
* Vodafone had its 500 billion written off in loss
* Compare the PSTN World & IP World where the PSTN world is a walled garden
* Telcos need to open the networks to IPs
* Hutch has invested 60B in picking up 3G licenses and the speed you get is 128 kbps
* 5B in Wifi – 10 Mbps
* Right now the color phone is now a ‘hygiene factor’
* Number series can be neither GSM or Landline network; we can have a LTP number also
* All 36 nets of Hutch are in bad shape
* — From audience, Single point access to GPRS by subscription. Voice Roaming is by Telcos. At this point, the discussion diverted into the fractured network of the WiFi network —
* — Rajan added that the main difference Farhan was pointing was regarding the Open Closed system. This is where Fon, the new company was aiming to remove this fracture and to create a seamless wifi network —
* About Spokn, it provides a platform to create your own subnetworks.
* It is through javascript; own ui using spokn
* Based on the LTP stack. Can go through NATs. Does not need TCP, uses UDP. Entirely OS. Speaks codec. Used GSM
* Does not switch calls
* Uses UDP port punching [?], can work behind NATs, does not have rendezvous, uses relay peers
* VOIP works over GPRS connection
* Calling costs as much as email costs you!!!

Sigbjorn Vik / Opera / 12:50 pm – 1:15 pm / my.opera.com/Sigbjorn/

* Presentation available on http://people.opera.com/sigbjorn/barcamphyderabad2
* Opera on Mobile
* Opera Mini – Java installed on mobile
* Any device supported! Not only a pc, nintendo…
* Design principles – Graceful degradation
* could not down a lot

Dr Vishal Garg / IIIT / 1:20 pm – 1:40pm

The presentation was a demo of their project of using a mobile phone as a remote controller. They were using the power line for transmitting the messages. Using the X10 protocol.

* Mobile phone as universal remote control
* In general for a remote the Media of communication : RF / IR / Power Line / Dedicted wire
* Why mobile as a urc? Widespread, possibility of independent settings, proecessing power, memory, display, ringer, secure ID, portable, has IR, Wifi, Bluetooth, has buttons

— Break for lunch —
My lunch session was the highlight of my day mainly because of the flow of information we had. I dont have any guys name and didnt note any of them down 😦 [Please if any of you guys read this, please send me mail regarding the same]. [update from Puneeth] The discussion group consisted of Anil from Bosch, Damodhar from Dolphine Computers, Puneeth, Jaihind Reddy and Marx. The main idea was if we can make the entrepreneurship a systematic process[Anil’s idea]. It was actually great seeing the amount of thought that went into it. Other than that it was also personal talk where we felt these days its the young guys thats taking the leap into entrepreneurship because the risk goes up as you get older. The discussion was interspersed with a lot of personal anectodes from all in the group and it was interesting to see that each and everyone of is either an entrepreneur or an aspiring one. Thanks guys.

Post Lunch
Post lunch, we had a video screening of Guy Kawasaki’s ‘Art of the Start’ talk. Most of the audience loitering in the lobby immediately sitting in the conference room. That was brilliant idea by Rajat and Rajan to get the barcampers back into the talks.

Sriram Krishnan / Microsoft / 3.00pm – 3:20pm
* Web 2.0, Devices and MS
* On best practises and things to watch out for
* Web 2.0 has brought out a change in website where each website is a service. [SOA]
* Anyone can consume the data
* ProgrammableWeb.com to get a list of all Open APIs existing and the Mashups
* SOAP: NTLM architecture, Federation – NOT lightweight
* Put your own server in the middle. REST based APIs
* As a reply from the audience if it is time to move to binary protocols, the answer was to use Zipped xml protocols, instead of binary protocols
* The main point was also about making the protocol less chatty. Put a server in the middle between the website and your mobile phone 🙂

After this we split up into two parallel sessions, I missed the talks of Rajan 😦 on Mobile 2.0 and the talk about the building the small business apps platform.

Anyways the two talks I attended were by Naresh and Mohit

Naresh / IIIT / 3:20pm – 3:50 pm / pSearch

The talk was basically about the search on mobiles based on location. So if you a hungry coder in Kavuri Hills near HiTech City and you key in ‘hyderabadi biryani’, you will get the most appropriate results based on your location. So mostly you will get the HiTech Biryani Center or Silicon Dhaba as your top results whereas your Bahaar or a Bawarchi or a Paradise would come later 😀

The local city locations database is build by these folks and the location code is extracted from the mobile service operator and the results which are extracted from the serach provider like google/yahoo and the results are provided by combining with our city location database.

You can get more information about this project at http://mobilesearch.nokia.com

Mohit / Entrepreneur / 3:50 pm – 4:00 pm / Bootstrapping your own enterprise

Mohits talk was basically about the bootstrapping the selves and a lot of tips and observations on entrepreneurship having been entrepreneur himself.

* Created a network called bootstrap hyderabad
* TiE is for VC connections. Bootstrap is for entrepreneurs to help bootstrap themselves
* Students have a lots of ideas, but most of the time they are clueless on how to proceed
* The time to market should be really less. Efficiency and good speed are very important
* Explanation on valley of death, ideation.
* There is no rule about which road to take. Its all about your individual choice and individual risk propensity
* Take care about your debt/equity ratio
* Start early. So you can have the time to prove yourself. Even if you fail, time is on your side and you can start again
* If “Be your own boss” is your reason for being an entrepreneur, think again. Your devil boss will appear like a sissy in front of your toughest customers
* Be Nice. Be moral. Be Ethical
* SCRUM approach: Demo. Sell. Build approach
* Liquidity is important. If possible get your clients to pay for the prototype or for a part of the product.
Talks I missed

1. Ramesh’s Talk
2. Rajans’ Talk
3. PDA for Pharma
4. Last final Brainstorming + Panel Discussion

Things I wished I did
1. Gave a presentation. My unfulfilled wish in Barcamp Hyderabad too 😦