india is great
i totally feel im in the right spot for where im at
in my life right now.
i just spent 4 days in mumbai
and im sick again which is a bit of a bummer.
mumbai is new york style rockin
after spending some time in calcutta, delhi, and
pondicherry (auroville.org) i decided to get an
apartment in mumbai cause it seemed like the
most exciteing place and because im doing internet
video stuff, so it seemed potentially useful to be
close to bollywood.
after a few months tho i noticed i was sorta low
grade sick most of the time and decided i wasn't willing
to sacrifice my physical or mental health for some
abstract ambition. so i moved to pune which is more
laid back then bombay, but has a larger software
scene, a famous yoga institutre (bksiyengar.com), and
the osho(.com) ashram which has tai chi classes in
the morning, meditation classes thru out the day, and
healthy food.
since coming to pune i feel like ive got a cool healthy
lifestyle, im productive, and im not spending that much
money. - probably ~$500 / mo. which makes me feel
comphortable taking some time figureing stuff out.
i spend alot of time in the ashram - which is mostly
western - tho not american.
in the tech world
people are really friendly as everyone wants to get contracts
from america.
there's not much of a start-up scene here yet.
everyone wants outsourcing jobs. im really curious
about how to help get the start-up culture goig.
the outsourcing wave is just beginning
in every city ive been to, all the walls are plastered with
ads for classes promising to teach people java and C++ .
there's 500,000,000 people in india under 25 and some
decend percentage of them are looking at getting into software.
the software thing has also been going on long
enough that there are some very smart and senior
people here. they just get paid MUCH better.
someone fresh out of college may make $250 / mo
while an accomplished engineer with 7 years experience
may make ten times that.
on the tech / pro side ive been focusing around video
stuff for alittle while. with the low cost of video production
gear and internet distribution the major cost is labor - so
i see video production & post in india being pretty key to
the transition of the web to a more video format.
i also feel there's an opprotunity now to be kind of
systematic about produceing the media we feel is
necessary - like producing all the training programs
in the matrix. so, im talking with a couple groups
about helping get a low end video production studio
going over here.
there's alot of other areas i want to get into
on the software side as well, like figuring out
how to deliver high bandwidth high latency
internet content to remote areas
http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~rywang/postmanet_paper/
http://unitedvillages.com
and doing stuff with structured syndication
...
ideally i'd find some balance between
setting up teams for start-ups back home
and having some sort of labs which can
work on interesting new ideas with the
goal of either open sourcing the development
or starting up with it - or both :)
