Thursday, May 15, 2008
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Ahmedabad
Tomorrow I'll meet with the people behind the iAccelerator program at IIM Ahmedabad. Tarun talked to them about mentoring their first batch of startups and managed to talk me in as a mentor as well. In the meantime I'm spending quality time with Jessica and Ruchira of Video Volunteers - of which I recently became a card carrying member of the board. If everything works out I'll spend the majority of the next three months here living on the IIM campus helping internet startups get started and working on the video volunteers internet strategy.
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Lamma Island
I'm back in Hong Kong preparing to fly back to India tomorrow. Ulrich introduced me to Jenny and Aaron Farr who have a nice place on Lamma island. Lamma island feels like the famed surf spot that no one should talk about because its so amazing and if everyone knew then it would be big and busy like everywhere else. Its got the laid back beach vibe of a dive down on one of the islands in the Philipines or Thailand. And its a fast 30 minute ferry to Hong Kong Central and maybe an hour and change to the hong kong airport. I don't think there is another place on the planet where you can move from uptempo urban megacenter to downtempo island style so quickly.
**
The shopping trip in Guan Zhao was a qualified success. Apparently the consumer electronics part of the Canton Fair was last week. This week was ceramics, sporting goods, stationary, and furniture. After discovering my mistake we poked around for awhile to get a feel for another world.
Later in the day though Ulrich's assistant Dianne took me to an electronics market that sold mp3 players, mobile phones, and components. In some ways it was more spectacular because it catered to the local wholesale market, went year round and appeared to be constantly busy. There are far more variations in the personal portable electronics than I appreciated.
I picked up a small number of very small mp3 players. Hopefully we can test out the 1mp3pc idea soon. Or maybe I'll start with 1mp3pt - (One mp3 player per teacher)
**
The shopping trip in Guan Zhao was a qualified success. Apparently the consumer electronics part of the Canton Fair was last week. This week was ceramics, sporting goods, stationary, and furniture. After discovering my mistake we poked around for awhile to get a feel for another world.
Later in the day though Ulrich's assistant Dianne took me to an electronics market that sold mp3 players, mobile phones, and components. In some ways it was more spectacular because it catered to the local wholesale market, went year round and appeared to be constantly busy. There are far more variations in the personal portable electronics than I appreciated.
I picked up a small number of very small mp3 players. Hopefully we can test out the 1mp3pc idea soon. Or maybe I'll start with 1mp3pt - (One mp3 player per teacher)
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
china
When I first spent a few weeks in Bangkok and finally managed to get out of the Koh San Rd. traveler district I remember being totally impressed with how modern and upscale the down town was. The skyrail took me from the river thru the city to a giant mall with glass tubes connecting its different towers.
Only shortly before I lived in Calcutta for a number of weeks which looked to me like a plausible semi dystopic vision for the future of a large percentage of the urban population. People swept up the garbage in the mornings and burned it in the streets. On long walks thru town I saw many people shitting on the street. Pollution was dense and the people were more ardently patriotic about their city than I have seen anywhere else. "Calcutta is the heart of India !!!"
Since then Andheri East in Mumbai has risen to compete with Calcutta in my mind for the poster child of the future.
My Skyrail ride in Thailand made me think Bangok was more on the Tokyo path than the Calcutta path.
The big suprise for me about China is that it also seems to be on the Tokyo path of development. The streets in Gwon Zhao are wide and empty. The cars are parallel parked neatly on the side of the roads. They use large Toyota Camrys for the Taxis. An extensive subway system that feels more modern than western airport light rails links the whole city and connects to a high speed train to Hong Kong. The lack of people is the most surprising for me though.
Most of India pulses with humanity. People are everywhere to the point where bumping up against them in movement or travel begins to feel natural. Often when I come home to California its the lack of people that strikes me most. The streets almost have a post catastrophe feel, like some disaster has annihilated the population and only 4 wheel mechanical beasts roam the streets.
China isn't quite that empty. But visible people are shockingly sparse for a country with a 1.4 billion population, and the small sample of it I've seen so far feels much more like Tokyo than Andheri.
Only shortly before I lived in Calcutta for a number of weeks which looked to me like a plausible semi dystopic vision for the future of a large percentage of the urban population. People swept up the garbage in the mornings and burned it in the streets. On long walks thru town I saw many people shitting on the street. Pollution was dense and the people were more ardently patriotic about their city than I have seen anywhere else. "Calcutta is the heart of India !!!"
Since then Andheri East in Mumbai has risen to compete with Calcutta in my mind for the poster child of the future.
My Skyrail ride in Thailand made me think Bangok was more on the Tokyo path than the Calcutta path.
The big suprise for me about China is that it also seems to be on the Tokyo path of development. The streets in Gwon Zhao are wide and empty. The cars are parallel parked neatly on the side of the roads. They use large Toyota Camrys for the Taxis. An extensive subway system that feels more modern than western airport light rails links the whole city and connects to a high speed train to Hong Kong. The lack of people is the most surprising for me though.
Most of India pulses with humanity. People are everywhere to the point where bumping up against them in movement or travel begins to feel natural. Often when I come home to California its the lack of people that strikes me most. The streets almost have a post catastrophe feel, like some disaster has annihilated the population and only 4 wheel mechanical beasts roam the streets.
China isn't quite that empty. But visible people are shockingly sparse for a country with a 1.4 billion population, and the small sample of it I've seen so far feels much more like Tokyo than Andheri.
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
1mp3pc
At the innovations2008 conference in Pune, I think I put AngelMentor as my company on the registration form and word got around that I was some kind of VC. A fellow Vikas Rajrishi (priest to the king) pulled me aside and told me he was looking for funding for a soil analysis business he was trying to start near his farm in Narangoan. I let him know I didn't know anything about the soil business but had been looking for an opportunity to explore the country outside Pune. He instantly invited me to his farm and the next day we were driving up there together.
On the road as we talked I let myself dream a little about the possibility for a rural media and technology institute between Pune and Bombay. We would teach all the skills people can use to make money off an internet connection, and all the services someone can with an internet connection can provide to the local rural community. The institute building structures would be built in a low impact manner such that we could vacate the land in some years and leave it better than it had originally been.
Vikas ran the idea by some of his farmer friends who were all positive as there is a trend of the youth leaving the rural areas for the big cities leaving some apprehension in the parents that when they die their ancestral lands may be lost / sold.
He also took me to see the local politician who wanted to see a large well funded IT park come and increase the value of all the land in the area. In some back and forth it was very clear that the thatch IT institute i had in mind and the glass palace IT parks he was looking for were very different. Somehow, this became an either or thing
and the door to Narangoan was closed.
***
High on the idea of moving outside and teaching for awhile I connected with the people at a vocational school VigyanAshram.com also near to Pune. After coordinating the donation of some wireless networking equipment to them I sent a bit of a shockwave thru my personal life by toying with the idea of moving out there to set up the media and technology institute. That notion fizzled as I came to feel that english is a critical prerequisite for the types of skills I want to teach and the English level of the average rural Maharashtran wasn't sufficient.
Talking with chandita from cometmedia.org she told me about Dr. Kurien with http://clrindia.net/. They've developed a bunch of curriculum for teaching rural and urban poor children and teachers English through workbooks and radio programs. For some time I have been fascinated by the idea of using mp3 players as an educational device, and Dr. Kurien seems to have some of the content that could make it happen. Talking with my friend Ulrich who has an office in China I discovered the Canton fair is happening this week, so I flew over to get a sense of what all options are available in off the shelf mp3 players.
I posted a request for 1gb mp3 players on Alibaba and from the 100 quotes I have gotten every day since it looks like they're about 7 - 8$ each in Bulk. Interestingly, Mp4 players with a screen, video and game capability are 30 - 40$ each.
Im excited about the show.
My hope is to come back with 50 - 200 of them we can pass out to teachers and see how effective they are.
Lets see...
On the road as we talked I let myself dream a little about the possibility for a rural media and technology institute between Pune and Bombay. We would teach all the skills people can use to make money off an internet connection, and all the services someone can with an internet connection can provide to the local rural community. The institute building structures would be built in a low impact manner such that we could vacate the land in some years and leave it better than it had originally been.
Vikas ran the idea by some of his farmer friends who were all positive as there is a trend of the youth leaving the rural areas for the big cities leaving some apprehension in the parents that when they die their ancestral lands may be lost / sold.
He also took me to see the local politician who wanted to see a large well funded IT park come and increase the value of all the land in the area. In some back and forth it was very clear that the thatch IT institute i had in mind and the glass palace IT parks he was looking for were very different. Somehow, this became an either or thing
and the door to Narangoan was closed.
***
High on the idea of moving outside and teaching for awhile I connected with the people at a vocational school VigyanAshram.com also near to Pune. After coordinating the donation of some wireless networking equipment to them I sent a bit of a shockwave thru my personal life by toying with the idea of moving out there to set up the media and technology institute. That notion fizzled as I came to feel that english is a critical prerequisite for the types of skills I want to teach and the English level of the average rural Maharashtran wasn't sufficient.
Talking with chandita from cometmedia.org she told me about Dr. Kurien with http://clrindia.net/. They've developed a bunch of curriculum for teaching rural and urban poor children and teachers English through workbooks and radio programs. For some time I have been fascinated by the idea of using mp3 players as an educational device, and Dr. Kurien seems to have some of the content that could make it happen. Talking with my friend Ulrich who has an office in China I discovered the Canton fair is happening this week, so I flew over to get a sense of what all options are available in off the shelf mp3 players.
I posted a request for 1gb mp3 players on Alibaba and from the 100 quotes I have gotten every day since it looks like they're about 7 - 8$ each in Bulk. Interestingly, Mp4 players with a screen, video and game capability are 30 - 40$ each.
Im excited about the show.
My hope is to come back with 50 - 200 of them we can pass out to teachers and see how effective they are.
Lets see...
Monday, April 14, 2008
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Friday, March 28, 2008
Baramati
Went to BaramatiInitiatives(.com) early this week.
The net of the conference seemed to be that technology is nolonger
the issue with rural connectivity, the issues are all financial and
regulatory. A senior guy at a big network provider in India
was a Colonel and gave us lots of fun stories about how to get things
done with a healthy disreguard for the letter of the law. That seems
to be the way of things - Make things happen quick and big enough to
make your customers a voteing bloc.
The net of the conference seemed to be that technology is nolonger
the issue with rural connectivity, the issues are all financial and
regulatory. A senior guy at a big network provider in India
was a Colonel and gave us lots of fun stories about how to get things
done with a healthy disreguard for the letter of the law. That seems
to be the way of things - Make things happen quick and big enough to
make your customers a voteing bloc.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
OLPC India
Tuesday the friendly folk at Reliance took a small group of us out to Khairat to visit the OLPC pilot school in India. The school has one room, one teacher and the kids are in 1st - 4th grades.
When we first arrived the teacher was giving a lecture on something in Marathi at the black board. Several laptops were in a corner being charged, most were lying on the floor with the kids, a couple were open.
Amit one of the Reliance people clearly knew the teacher and the children well, so when he entered the kids all opened their laptops and started eagerly showing all of us the different things they could do with their computers.
The laptops were passed out in early October of last year. By now everyone was very comphortable with them. They could navigate menus, understood how to click on icons, could click and drag objects across the screen, etc.
At least in the eagerness surrounding showing off their knowledge to the friendly outsiders who came in, their principal purpose in pushing buttons, clicking and dragging seemed to be to make the device do something ie. make noise or do some animation. Towards this end the kids could explore the menu system to great depth, but without any english comprehension of the meaning of the text I don't think they 'understood' the conceptual layout of the system very deeply.
They did understand the top level of icons and which ones would bring up interesting applications.
The laptops were in remarkably good condition. I saw that one key 'i' had ripped off one of the laptops, but that was the only problem I saw, and you could still get the 'i' to type by touching your finger to the contact points.
I don't know what the problem was, but the school server was not operational.
The couple hours there were wonderful. The kids are super enthusiastic and there is a feeling that 'something special' is happening. The teacher was also very nice and encouraging.
While everyone is very excited, its not immediately obvious how to use the laptops to better teach the curriculum educators are accustomed to. I see a need for someone technical to spend time working with the children and the laptops to pioneer ways of actively using them to facilitate learning beyond the conventional methods.
Maybe me :)
Saturday, February 16, 2008
India and America
Super funny popular hindi music video subtitled as a native english speaker understands the words -
Tamil antiwar video -
Tamil antiwar video -
Sunday, February 03, 2008
Varanasi
I just returned from Varanasi. Its my favorite city so far. Calcutta impressed me because so many people I met were spending the large part of their days serving the poor at Mother Theresa's hospital and with other organizations. With Varanasi most people I met were studying music, yoga or Sanskrit and Vedic literature.
The student teacher relationship was much more guru style than the western classrooms I am used to. Students would meet with their guru - teacher for a couple of hours every day, show what they had learned and get advice for how to progress further. The relationships were long term often lasting many years, tho with the student leaving every year to travel or return to the west.
I spoke with my friend Freedom about his experiences. He's a teacher of Vedic astrology in Emeryville, CA. When he first started teaching he gave very individual attention to his students. He found though that it was very time consuming, and that if the students were not dedicated - the time was lost. While mentoring in this fashion he found that he often repeated much of the same information in helping them establish a foundation in the art. After some time he refined this material into a lesson plan which he could use to teach a class to a larger group of people, and later turned some of it into a book .
Friday, January 25, 2008
Friday, December 28, 2007
Plastic Bottle Island
This guy has a website - Spiral Islanders. It definitely gets my mind spinning.
i found this on the makeithappen.com blog
i found this on the makeithappen.com blog
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Saturday, December 08, 2007
ClubHack.com
Camping on the free wifi at ClubHack here in Pune.
The note in the registration booklet warns
"This is public internet at a hacker's conference, use at your own risk"
Some random notes so far :
Apparently the current market rate for a valid stolen mastercard / visa credit card number is about $2.
Malware kits have grown in popularity and effectiveness thanks in part to a market for compromised machines (zombies) to relay spam or execute DOS attacks. MPack is actually commercial software.
The business is good enough to pay for marketing. According to this speaker's analysis paid search results are 3x more likely to be malware sites.
The note in the registration booklet warns
"This is public internet at a hacker's conference, use at your own risk"
Some random notes so far :
Apparently the current market rate for a valid stolen mastercard / visa credit card number is about $2.
Malware kits have grown in popularity and effectiveness thanks in part to a market for compromised machines (zombies) to relay spam or execute DOS attacks. MPack is actually commercial software.
The business is good enough to pay for marketing. According to this speaker's analysis paid search results are 3x more likely to be malware sites.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Voice Mail in India
I don't understand this.
Its clearly not a technical issue.
Why is voice mail not a part of
communication culture in India ?
Its clearly not a technical issue.
Why is voice mail not a part of
communication culture in India ?
Fun, Sun, and Distributed Software Development
RedSwoosh moved their engineering team to Thailand for a couple weeks and received alot of good press for their working vacation on the beach.
It's a great example of the possibilities for the nomadic cyber hacker culture my friend Ulrich has been promoting
When I arrived in India, I spent 6 months searching for a location that balanced my ambition to create an Internet Start-up Factory with a desire for a fun healthy life style. My search ended when I landed in Koregoan Park, Pune. Its a resort area, but also has a vital tech scene, and is known as a university town within India.
Since then I have been a part of a number of global software development projects and feel strongly that to make global development more healthy its good to get everyone involved spending as much time as possible hanging out together. So, for western companies there is a real economic incentive to be working with remote engineering teams located some place nice. It makes it much more likely the western part of the team will be willing to spend significant time working directly with their Indian counterparts creating the team spirit and cohesiveness necessary for a healthy engineering organization.
With the outsourced engineering projects I've seen go bad, the failure has come from an 'us and them' type attitude between the US and Indian development teams where the two sides talk generically about the other side as a whole rather than about the individual issues with specific people. This would be alot less antagonistic if everyone involved had spent several weeks working together from a beach shack in Goa.
It's a great example of the possibilities for the nomadic cyber hacker culture my friend Ulrich has been promoting
When I arrived in India, I spent 6 months searching for a location that balanced my ambition to create an Internet Start-up Factory with a desire for a fun healthy life style. My search ended when I landed in Koregoan Park, Pune. Its a resort area, but also has a vital tech scene, and is known as a university town within India.
Since then I have been a part of a number of global software development projects and feel strongly that to make global development more healthy its good to get everyone involved spending as much time as possible hanging out together. So, for western companies there is a real economic incentive to be working with remote engineering teams located some place nice. It makes it much more likely the western part of the team will be willing to spend significant time working directly with their Indian counterparts creating the team spirit and cohesiveness necessary for a healthy engineering organization.
With the outsourced engineering projects I've seen go bad, the failure has come from an 'us and them' type attitude between the US and Indian development teams where the two sides talk generically about the other side as a whole rather than about the individual issues with specific people. This would be alot less antagonistic if everyone involved had spent several weeks working together from a beach shack in Goa.
wifi love in berkely
This morning I did a quick search for a 'walk in clinic berkeley' and found the free clinic on Durrant. Figuring there wouldn't be much of a line at 10am I headed there with just the address written on my arm.
Walking up Durrant what I expected to be an obvious health clinic just didn't materialize. Standing in front of the prespeterian church at 2348 Durrant I lamented my poor planning in not writing down a phone number when I was home online.
After standing for a while wondering where there might be a cyber cafe I remembered that my phone has wifi access. I popped it open and searched for open wifi networks, and with just alittle walking I got online and found the websites and phone numbers I was looking for.
God bless the Internet.
Walking up Durrant what I expected to be an obvious health clinic just didn't materialize. Standing in front of the prespeterian church at 2348 Durrant I lamented my poor planning in not writing down a phone number when I was home online.
After standing for a while wondering where there might be a cyber cafe I remembered that my phone has wifi access. I popped it open and searched for open wifi networks, and with just alittle walking I got online and found the websites and phone numbers I was looking for.
God bless the Internet.
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Rome
I love the world.
I'm staying in a cheap hostel in Rome after working with Fabio up in Rimini for the past week. I got off the train and some girl with a laminated badge and a clipboard asked if I needed a place to stay. I am so used to ignoring hawkers in India that I walked past her before I did the math and figured out that I absolutely needed a place to stay and I had no clue how to go about finding one. (short of logging onto the internet) Standing on the platform she called a couple of hostels until she found one in the center of town with a bed for 18 euro / night. She pointed to the place on a map she gave me, smiled, said have a nice day and walked away.
Rockin.
So, now I'm sitting at a small desk in this room on the 6th floor overlooking a small intersection in downtown Rome. After walking around the ruins for awhile and taking a short nap I opened up my laptop to write a trip report. At the same time I turned speaker on my phone to play music. After playing Bhajans for awhile it clicked into 'Be My Lover'. The older Italian lady running this place came into ask in broken English what the song was she would look for it on the internet. I wrote the title down for her and 5 minutes later I heard it playing loudly from her office. For kicks I checked to see if there was wifi available. All the initial access points were locked, but after some time another free access point came online which I'm on now.
The only downside to my techno fabulous day is my Nokia N93i. After 3 weeks in the shop they gave me a 'refurbished phone'. This is after two previous attempts of about a week each where they responded to my problem of a broken mic for the video camera by flashing the firmware to rid the phone of any viruses that might be causing the problem. My original phone also had this annoying habit of randomly shutting off sometimes.
The mic on the new phone works fine and it hasn't shut off on my yet, but its got its own drama. One of the buttons I used to set options on the camera doesn't work, and more importantly at the moment, the connection to the pc cable I use to upload pics and videos doesn't work reliably. So, while I've been shooting lots of pics and videos this past week, they're stuck for the moment on my phones rapidly filling up memory card. :(
I'm staying in a cheap hostel in Rome after working with Fabio up in Rimini for the past week. I got off the train and some girl with a laminated badge and a clipboard asked if I needed a place to stay. I am so used to ignoring hawkers in India that I walked past her before I did the math and figured out that I absolutely needed a place to stay and I had no clue how to go about finding one. (short of logging onto the internet) Standing on the platform she called a couple of hostels until she found one in the center of town with a bed for 18 euro / night. She pointed to the place on a map she gave me, smiled, said have a nice day and walked away.
Rockin.
So, now I'm sitting at a small desk in this room on the 6th floor overlooking a small intersection in downtown Rome. After walking around the ruins for awhile and taking a short nap I opened up my laptop to write a trip report. At the same time I turned speaker on my phone to play music. After playing Bhajans for awhile it clicked into 'Be My Lover'. The older Italian lady running this place came into ask in broken English what the song was she would look for it on the internet. I wrote the title down for her and 5 minutes later I heard it playing loudly from her office. For kicks I checked to see if there was wifi available. All the initial access points were locked, but after some time another free access point came online which I'm on now.
The only downside to my techno fabulous day is my Nokia N93i. After 3 weeks in the shop they gave me a 'refurbished phone'. This is after two previous attempts of about a week each where they responded to my problem of a broken mic for the video camera by flashing the firmware to rid the phone of any viruses that might be causing the problem. My original phone also had this annoying habit of randomly shutting off sometimes.
The mic on the new phone works fine and it hasn't shut off on my yet, but its got its own drama. One of the buttons I used to set options on the camera doesn't work, and more importantly at the moment, the connection to the pc cable I use to upload pics and videos doesn't work reliably. So, while I've been shooting lots of pics and videos this past week, they're stuck for the moment on my phones rapidly filling up memory card. :(
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Traffic & Link Analysis
I have been looking into different mechanisms for tracking website traffic, popularity, analytics and whatnot. I signed up for Google Analytics and those stats have been great. Additionally I'm looking at Compete.com, Alexa & Quantcast. Reading a post on Traffick today I learned about google's Webmaster Tools which gives provides info about how a site scores on a variety of search queries. Here's how my blog does :
Top search queries Average top position
1. edu 2.0 7
2. permaculture credit union 10
3. resurrection lily 10
4. arriane 6
5. laura drewett video 3
6. freeman thailand 2
7. etrade global trading 7
8. laura drewett 10
9. freeman video 20
10. kiva freeman 1
11. freemans audio 4
12. freeman school mumbai 5
13. where's the internet 6
14. freeman you tube 8
15. where's disneyland 8
16. freeman foto 1
17. wheres the internet 5
18. freeman's video 9
19. pop freeman 9
20. viagra store 43
Im not sure how I landed the 8th position for 'where's disneyland'
The viagra store is evidence of a particularly bad case of comment
spam I took care of some time ago.
Top search queries Average top position
1. edu 2.0 7
2. permaculture credit union 10
3. resurrection lily 10
4. arriane 6
5. laura drewett video 3
6. freeman thailand 2
7. etrade global trading 7
8. laura drewett 10
9. freeman video 20
10. kiva freeman 1
11. freemans audio 4
12. freeman school mumbai 5
13. where's the internet 6
14. freeman you tube 8
15. where's disneyland 8
16. freeman foto 1
17. wheres the internet 5
18. freeman's video 9
19. pop freeman 9
20. viagra store 43
Im not sure how I landed the 8th position for 'where's disneyland'
The viagra store is evidence of a particularly bad case of comment
spam I took care of some time ago.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
BigDog Instructional Design
SkillsCamp gave me the chance to see a variety of approaches to teaching technical material and experiment with my own. This has increased my appreciation of good teachers and opened my eyes to the field of instructional design.
At EIndia last month I met Douglas Bell, an instructional designer with EDC. Last night I called him to ask for advice on how to create compelling educational materials.
Here are some notes from that call :
Develop explicit learning objectives
Be 'needs' based
Avoid creating material that is just an orientation
Create tasks with which people will develop skills by accomplishing the tasks
Be clear - 'at the end of this module students can do x, y, z'
Learning objectives should be objective and observable
Assessment so students can get feedback of whether they're on the right track
Iterate, watch closely to see how students are responding to the material and modify the material accordingly - you probably won't get it the first time.
PRACTICE
Action based, avoid passive lectures
Look at what other people are doing, online universities, etc
google: big dog instructional design
for a site that has good information on instructional design. Maybe this
At EIndia last month I met Douglas Bell, an instructional designer with EDC. Last night I called him to ask for advice on how to create compelling educational materials.
Here are some notes from that call :
Develop explicit learning objectives
Be 'needs' based
Avoid creating material that is just an orientation
Create tasks with which people will develop skills by accomplishing the tasks
Be clear - 'at the end of this module students can do x, y, z'
Learning objectives should be objective and observable
Assessment so students can get feedback of whether they're on the right track
Iterate, watch closely to see how students are responding to the material and modify the material accordingly - you probably won't get it the first time.
PRACTICE
Action based, avoid passive lectures
Look at what other people are doing, online universities, etc
google: big dog instructional design
for a site that has good information on instructional design. Maybe this
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Kendara
Archive.org rocks. Anyone curious can look at the website for the startup I did after leaving Sun back in 1999. Check it out.
Digital Bridge Camp
Since Sunday I've been here in Devlali - close to Nasik - at the Digital Bridge Camp. The purpose of the camp has been to connect people working in non-profits with technology which can make their jobs easier.
During my two sessions so far I walked people thru using and setting up a wiki on pbwiki.com and creating a blog on blogger.com.
Right now Noel Hidalgo is demonstrating a number of tech tools and resources non-profits can take advantage of including
- the different kits Tactical Tech offers nonprofits
- NTen has webinars for showing people how to migrate to Linux or, GIS or using Google Adwords.
- dotorganize study on technology available for social change organizations.
- personal democracy formum also provides research reports on technology in politics.
- mobileactive.org directory and strategy resources for uses of mobile technolgoy in activism.
- greenmediatoolshed.org
- globalvoicesonline.org
- dotsub.com website for helping subtitle videos
- internet archive
After tea we're going to introduce googlegroups, civicspace, mailman and a variety of other mailing list software and free content management solutions
Yesterday, Sapna Shahani who worked at the Berkeley Community Media Center before moving back to India talked about her plans to set up a community media center in Mumbai.
Prof. Nagarjuna also gave a talk on the SELF Platform which he's been developing at the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education. He also introduced Wikipedia and gave an impassioned speech on wiki culture or the culture of openness.
During my two sessions so far I walked people thru using and setting up a wiki on pbwiki.com and creating a blog on blogger.com.
Right now Noel Hidalgo is demonstrating a number of tech tools and resources non-profits can take advantage of including
- the different kits Tactical Tech offers nonprofits
- NTen has webinars for showing people how to migrate to Linux or, GIS or using Google Adwords.
- dotorganize study on technology available for social change organizations.
- personal democracy formum also provides research reports on technology in politics.
- mobileactive.org directory and strategy resources for uses of mobile technolgoy in activism.
- greenmediatoolshed.org
- globalvoicesonline.org
- dotsub.com website for helping subtitle videos
- internet archive
After tea we're going to introduce googlegroups, civicspace, mailman and a variety of other mailing list software and free content management solutions
Yesterday, Sapna Shahani who worked at the Berkeley Community Media Center before moving back to India talked about her plans to set up a community media center in Mumbai.
Prof. Nagarjuna also gave a talk on the SELF Platform which he's been developing at the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education. He also introduced Wikipedia and gave an impassioned speech on wiki culture or the culture of openness.
Monday, September 17, 2007
Venture Capitalist Development Programme
I just got accepted to the Wadhwani Venture Capitalist Development Programme
I'm super excited. My friend Sheel Mohnot's friend Ashish Badjatia went to it last year and recommended it highly on his blog.
I'm super excited. My friend Sheel Mohnot's friend Ashish Badjatia went to it last year and recommended it highly on his blog.
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Rapid Execution vs. Capacity Building
In the time I've been here in India I've met a number of people working at or running service companies. The most common engagement models for these companies I have seen are:
- fixed bid projects
- fixed price per developer (no transparency)
- cost plus (full transparency, hiring company can negotiate directly with the employees, the service company takes an HR fee for doing the search, plus a monthly facilities fee, plus some margin)
Of these I generally push for the cost plus model for the obvious benefits transparency brings, and the employees in India feel more like first class citizens in the companies they are ultimately working for. It also tends to be expensive as dealing with less expensive / more junior developers requires time, sensitivity and hand holding, all of which are hard to do across 11 time zones and 12,000 miles.
With fixed bid projects, often much of the work is done by junior engineers hidden behind someone who communicates well and interfaces to the client. There can be time & cost benefits to this, but because the process is opaque, the back end to these types of operations tends to shuffle a bit, which can make consistency problematic.
Amitabh Jain runs a small software service company that approaches this differently. Oriented around building teams for his clients, he initially hires junior developers and then mentors them as a group in the technologies and processes of the client. It takes some time for the teams to become productive, and Amitabh reflects this in an escalating payment structure which starts at a few hundred dollars / month / engineer and grows each month such that after a year the client is paying market rates.
I like this model because it reflects the current conditions of the labor pool,
it gives Amitabh the chance to add significant value by mentoring the individuals and teams involved, and the hiring companies benefit from having cohesive teams at a lower cost and with less risk than if they tried to hire more senior people individually directly. The downside is time, its definitely more about capacity building than executing a project quickly.
- fixed bid projects
- fixed price per developer (no transparency)
- cost plus (full transparency, hiring company can negotiate directly with the employees, the service company takes an HR fee for doing the search, plus a monthly facilities fee, plus some margin)
Of these I generally push for the cost plus model for the obvious benefits transparency brings, and the employees in India feel more like first class citizens in the companies they are ultimately working for. It also tends to be expensive as dealing with less expensive / more junior developers requires time, sensitivity and hand holding, all of which are hard to do across 11 time zones and 12,000 miles.
With fixed bid projects, often much of the work is done by junior engineers hidden behind someone who communicates well and interfaces to the client. There can be time & cost benefits to this, but because the process is opaque, the back end to these types of operations tends to shuffle a bit, which can make consistency problematic.
Amitabh Jain runs a small software service company that approaches this differently. Oriented around building teams for his clients, he initially hires junior developers and then mentors them as a group in the technologies and processes of the client. It takes some time for the teams to become productive, and Amitabh reflects this in an escalating payment structure which starts at a few hundred dollars / month / engineer and grows each month such that after a year the client is paying market rates.
I like this model because it reflects the current conditions of the labor pool,
it gives Amitabh the chance to add significant value by mentoring the individuals and teams involved, and the hiring companies benefit from having cohesive teams at a lower cost and with less risk than if they tried to hire more senior people individually directly. The downside is time, its definitely more about capacity building than executing a project quickly.
Monday, September 10, 2007
Teaching Programming MIT & IITb
I am researching ideas on how to prepare students with the skills and work ethic necessary to be effective programmers.
Philip Greenspun has some interesting
thoughts on What's wrong with the standard undergraduate computer science curriculum and has published a course on Software Engineering for Internet Applications to address some of these issues. He encourages other comp. sci. educators to provide this course as well and provides them with teaching resources.
This is the assignment list Professor Om P. Damani put together for his Foundation Lab course at IIT Bombay. I really like the assignments, but I'm kind of blown away by how much work they are and how little time is given to complete them. A good friend of mine went to IIT and said this was standard and mentioned that this class was one of three a student would be taking in a semester all with similar work loads.
Another aspect of Damani's class I find interesting is that there doesn't appear to be any programming instruction ie. descriptions of arrays, functions, classes, objects etc .. There wouldn't be time. A student needs to pick up a new language and create a large project with it in the time it would take an MCA academy to get to looping.
Philip Greenspun has some interesting
thoughts on What's wrong with the standard undergraduate computer science curriculum and has published a course on Software Engineering for Internet Applications to address some of these issues. He encourages other comp. sci. educators to provide this course as well and provides them with teaching resources.
This is the assignment list Professor Om P. Damani put together for his Foundation Lab course at IIT Bombay. I really like the assignments, but I'm kind of blown away by how much work they are and how little time is given to complete them. A good friend of mine went to IIT and said this was standard and mentioned that this class was one of three a student would be taking in a semester all with similar work loads.
Another aspect of Damani's class I find interesting is that there doesn't appear to be any programming instruction ie. descriptions of arrays, functions, classes, objects etc .. There wouldn't be time. A student needs to pick up a new language and create a large project with it in the time it would take an MCA academy to get to looping.
Tipping in India
In America tipping waiters and delivery people is automatic. There may be a few edge cases as you get closer to fast food, but not very many.
The ambiguity runs the complete spectrum here. Many Indians I eat with don't tip at all or leave a token couple of coins even on fairly expensive meals. Others - especially if they have spent significant time in the states - leave the western 10 - 15%.
The weirdness is further intensified for the broad range of prices involved. Like we have a chaiwalla who comes by my place twice a day and pours each of us a small cup of chai for 3 rupees each. I'm not involved in the financial transaction, but I'm sure there's no tip involved.
In contrast the pizza I just ate for dinner was 160 rps. Somehow I felt funny tipping the pizza delivery guy when the chaiwalla guy came and poured us all cups of chai for less than I would have tipped for the pizza, so I dissed him.
But whereas the chaiwalla has probably never gotten a tip from anyone, I have tipped the delivery guy before, so there was anticipation there which wasn't met. I feel guilty about that.
The ambiguity runs the complete spectrum here. Many Indians I eat with don't tip at all or leave a token couple of coins even on fairly expensive meals. Others - especially if they have spent significant time in the states - leave the western 10 - 15%.
The weirdness is further intensified for the broad range of prices involved. Like we have a chaiwalla who comes by my place twice a day and pours each of us a small cup of chai for 3 rupees each. I'm not involved in the financial transaction, but I'm sure there's no tip involved.
In contrast the pizza I just ate for dinner was 160 rps. Somehow I felt funny tipping the pizza delivery guy when the chaiwalla guy came and poured us all cups of chai for less than I would have tipped for the pizza, so I dissed him.
But whereas the chaiwalla has probably never gotten a tip from anyone, I have tipped the delivery guy before, so there was anticipation there which wasn't met. I feel guilty about that.
Thursday, August 30, 2007
facebook bandwagon
I am officially on the Facebook bandwagon.
Today I got my first Facebook application working
in its very rudimentary 'Hello World' state,
but I have to say I'm feeling good about the
experience so far. Here's a great post with lots
of sample code to look at when developing your own.
sample code for facebook
Today I got my first Facebook application working
in its very rudimentary 'Hello World' state,
but I have to say I'm feeling good about the
experience so far. Here's a great post with lots
of sample code to look at when developing your own.
sample code for facebook
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Open Source Education May Solve Talent Crunch
SkillsCamp in the news !!
http://epaper.livemint.com/
P eople from Pune's tech unconference community gathered at the Symbiosis Institute of Computer Studies and Research on 18 August for the first edition of SkillsCamp, a BarCamp style gathering of geeks with a focus on giving technical training to the hightech community.
A number of ideas came together in the SkillsCamp concept. At BarCampPune3, on 7 July, I gave a talk on opensource education and pointed to a variety of examples such as MIT Open Courseware http://ocw.mit.edu and the Digital Studyhall Project http://dsh.cs.washington.edu, in which videos of expert teachers are freely distributed to the global community. I believe this model of open source education is the only scalable solution to the talent crunch facing the technology sector in India, as evidenced by the much talked about exodus of Riya.com from India because of the difficulty and expense of finding quality senior software developers.
Following that talk, a number of the Pune BarCamp organizers offered to help, so SkillsCamp was born in an effort to galvanize the Indian technology community to create quality open source courseware helpful to people working in the IT industry.
About 70 people attended the first SkillsCamp and held sessions on a variety of topics ranging from Google Gears to AJAX to using screen readers to make Linux accessible to the blind. There were about 10 sessions total. SkillsCamp was sponsored by Codewalla.com and SkillsCorps.com. SkillsCorps also recorded video and screencasts for most sessions, which will be freely available on its website.
Freeman Murray has worked in the high-tech industry in California and India for the past 12 years, including a stint at Sun Microsystems, Inc. on the Java group. Currently, Freeman is starting a company in Pune, SkillsCorps.com.
http://epaper.livemint.com/
P eople from Pune's tech unconference community gathered at the Symbiosis Institute of Computer Studies and Research on 18 August for the first edition of SkillsCamp, a BarCamp style gathering of geeks with a focus on giving technical training to the hightech community.
A number of ideas came together in the SkillsCamp concept. At BarCampPune3, on 7 July, I gave a talk on opensource education and pointed to a variety of examples such as MIT Open Courseware http://ocw.mit.edu and the Digital Studyhall Project http://dsh.cs.washington.edu, in which videos of expert teachers are freely distributed to the global community. I believe this model of open source education is the only scalable solution to the talent crunch facing the technology sector in India, as evidenced by the much talked about exodus of Riya.com from India because of the difficulty and expense of finding quality senior software developers.
Following that talk, a number of the Pune BarCamp organizers offered to help, so SkillsCamp was born in an effort to galvanize the Indian technology community to create quality open source courseware helpful to people working in the IT industry.
About 70 people attended the first SkillsCamp and held sessions on a variety of topics ranging from Google Gears to AJAX to using screen readers to make Linux accessible to the blind. There were about 10 sessions total. SkillsCamp was sponsored by Codewalla.com and SkillsCorps.com. SkillsCorps also recorded video and screencasts for most sessions, which will be freely available on its website.
Freeman Murray has worked in the high-tech industry in California and India for the past 12 years, including a stint at Sun Microsystems, Inc. on the Java group. Currently, Freeman is starting a company in Pune, SkillsCorps.com.
Monday, August 27, 2007
Digital Bridge Camp
DigitalBridgeCamp is a variation on the BarCamp unconference in which people from the tech sector and the development sector come together to understand what this marriage between IT and Development is all about.
Like a good first date it will be held in the majestic hill station of Devlali at the Leslie Sawhney Center. The accommodation is comfortable (each unit consists of 2 rooms, 4 beds and an attached toilet and bathroom) and the surroundings are pretty. (FYI – the centre is run by a retired army Brigadier who will remind you that it is not a hotel and meal times go by the bell!)
We expect sessions to be on technical subjects such as how non-profits can take advantage of FOSS and internet applications to help make their organizations more effective and cost effecient, as well as sessions on the work of a variety of NGOs, especially those which are attempting to apply IT to help solve the problems of the 'Digital Divide' that exists with the urban and rural poor.
In addition to the presentation sessions we would also like to take some time to have workshops in which we work through some questions like what should courseware look like that ngo IT workers should go thru to effectively use IT in their jobs, and if we can get the right people around the table we might be able to bang out courseware for school & telecentre computer operators as well.
Towards the end of the camp we would love it if some of the non-profit people present were able to articulate some of their IT needs such that the tech people could help them set up blogs, wiki's, and other tools that might be of service to the non-profit organizations.
Remember, at a BarCamp, everybody participates! That means the attendees are the presenters and the audience. If you aren't going to present, you can organize a discussion or publish notes from a talk. We really want you to find a way to contribute, so here's a handy HowToContribute guide.
http://barcamp.org/DigitalBridgeCamp
Like a good first date it will be held in the majestic hill station of Devlali at the Leslie Sawhney Center. The accommodation is comfortable (each unit consists of 2 rooms, 4 beds and an attached toilet and bathroom) and the surroundings are pretty. (FYI – the centre is run by a retired army Brigadier who will remind you that it is not a hotel and meal times go by the bell!)
We expect sessions to be on technical subjects such as how non-profits can take advantage of FOSS and internet applications to help make their organizations more effective and cost effecient, as well as sessions on the work of a variety of NGOs, especially those which are attempting to apply IT to help solve the problems of the 'Digital Divide' that exists with the urban and rural poor.
In addition to the presentation sessions we would also like to take some time to have workshops in which we work through some questions like what should courseware look like that ngo IT workers should go thru to effectively use IT in their jobs, and if we can get the right people around the table we might be able to bang out courseware for school & telecentre computer operators as well.
Towards the end of the camp we would love it if some of the non-profit people present were able to articulate some of their IT needs such that the tech people could help them set up blogs, wiki's, and other tools that might be of service to the non-profit organizations.
Remember, at a BarCamp, everybody participates! That means the attendees are the presenters and the audience. If you aren't going to present, you can organize a discussion or publish notes from a talk. We really want you to find a way to contribute, so here's a handy HowToContribute guide.
http://barcamp.org/DigitalBridgeCamp
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Democracy Now
Sometime back I subscribed to the Democracy Now newsletter. At this point I feel it is the best source regular news and commentary surrounding global events that I have come across.
Two recent articles in particular made me appreciate the intelligence and insight of their guests.
Nir Rosen gave a better / more believable description of the Iraqi state than I have seen.
what you’ll see is basically Mogadishu in Iraq: various warlords controlling small neighborhoods. And those who are by major resources, such as oil installations, obviously will be foreign-sponsored warlords who will be able to cut deals with us, the Chinese. But Iraq is destroyed full article here
Today Scott Horton talked about Karl Rove's involvement with using the Justice Department to prosecute Democratic officials
Karl had spoken to the Department of Justice, and they didn't have to worry about Don Siegelman anymore. He was going to be taken care of.
full article here
I highly recommend subscribing to Democracy Now !
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Auroville - Solitude Farm
Check out this video: Solitude Vegetable Garden
Finally getting to edit some of the videos I took when I was down south. Spent some good time reconnecting with Krishna at the Solitude farm in Auroville. He introduced me to Fukuoka's philosophy of natural farming which applies to many other aspects of life as well.
Hanging out on the farm rekindled my dreams of getting outside and living a more natural lifestyle. At this point I've spent enough time on a variety of organic farms to believe that is the most healthy way of living. At the same time commercial organic farming doesn't appear to be very practical.
My solution of course is using all that good organic solar energy to power a team of software developers to tickle the necessary money out of a wireless internet connection - probably attached to the windmill.
Finally getting to edit some of the videos I took when I was down south. Spent some good time reconnecting with Krishna at the Solitude farm in Auroville. He introduced me to Fukuoka's philosophy of natural farming which applies to many other aspects of life as well.
Hanging out on the farm rekindled my dreams of getting outside and living a more natural lifestyle. At this point I've spent enough time on a variety of organic farms to believe that is the most healthy way of living. At the same time commercial organic farming doesn't appear to be very practical.
My solution of course is using all that good organic solar energy to power a team of software developers to tickle the necessary money out of a wireless internet connection - probably attached to the windmill.
Sunday, August 19, 2007
SkillsCamp post
SkillsCamp came together this weekend.
I'm guessing 60 - 70 people showed up
with maybe 50 people there for most of
the event.
Despite a variety of glitches, I consider
it an unqualified success.
The unconference structure lends itself very well
to experimenting with new ways of gathering. We weren't
sure how many people would come to skills camp this weekend.
There was some thought that it might get covered in the press
which would have a slashdot effect as large numbers of people
found out about the opportunity for free food and IT training
from some of the smartest people in industry.
As it was the message went out primarily thru the traditional
geek channels (plug, barcamp-pune, itvidya) and the barcamp, plug,
itvidya crowd came - which was great !!
Simbiosis generously gave us use of 4 rooms for the conference.
With the people we had tho I decided it would be better to just
have two parallel tracks and end earlier. As a result the sessions
were well attended and there was generally always something going on
even if one session was stuck for sometime messing with the projector
or screencasting software.
Sessions were generally very similar to most barcamp sessions. Which
is to say good for a high level introduction to interesting concepts.
I talked on google gears walking people through the gears tutorials on
the google site. Other sessions covered the Facebook API, screen reading
software for the blind, 3d game development, security, setting up drupal,
open source circuit design and a variety of others.
This week I'll try to get videos out.
I was most impressed with the session Amitabh Jain gave on AJAX. His session had a very clear structure taking people from a starting point of a functional webapp without AJAX, to implementing the same app using AJAX. He had prepared one file with code snippets for the core functions we were to use. During the session he slowly integrated these snippets into the web app to add AJAX features one by one. It was systematic and reflected genuine software development in a very practical way. Again the video will be up soon so you can see what I'm talking about.
I don't know if I'll try to organize another skillscamp in the near future. Rather I'd like to push for a skillscamp tag for training sessions people give at the regular barcamps.
Sunday, August 12, 2007
BarCamp evolves
I am excited about how BarCamp is evolving. Barcamp Bangalore 4 last month was largest barcamp ever - anywhere - at over 600 registered participants.
Some thoughts on how barcamp may improve over time :
- session tagging
From looking at the wiki and the paper wiki we post at the event I would love to get alittle more metadata about the session beyond the session title. Some tags could be Tutorial, General Discussion, Demo, Panel ... This need not be mandatory, its just an extra hint to attendees and participants.
- use the wiki more
get a paragraph of bio data and session description from the presenters.
select rooms and times on the wiki itself, leaving some rooms open for sessions which are more adhoc and can be scheduled on site in real time.
- give a printed handout at registration with the schedule of sessions, more detailed presenter bio and session info - and a map.
- The annual.
I love the quarterly consistency. Maybe choose one camp of the year when the weather is the best February ? to be THE annual barcamp. Somehow make this special and promote it more.
Some thoughts on how barcamp may improve over time :
- session tagging
From looking at the wiki and the paper wiki we post at the event I would love to get alittle more metadata about the session beyond the session title. Some tags could be Tutorial, General Discussion, Demo, Panel ... This need not be mandatory, its just an extra hint to attendees and participants.
- use the wiki more
get a paragraph of bio data and session description from the presenters.
select rooms and times on the wiki itself, leaving some rooms open for sessions which are more adhoc and can be scheduled on site in real time.
- give a printed handout at registration with the schedule of sessions, more detailed presenter bio and session info - and a map.
- The annual.
I love the quarterly consistency. Maybe choose one camp of the year when the weather is the best February ? to be THE annual barcamp. Somehow make this special and promote it more.
Saturday, August 04, 2007
Abdul talks about the weird destruction at CoffeeDay
When I was in the states for my grandma's passing, I heard from Pune that all the restaurants on lane 6 had been demolished. I was totally depressed. It sounds shallow, but the restaurants on lane 6, an Italian restaurant named Il Fungo Magico in particular, are some of the main reasons why I like living in Koregoan Park, Pune, and India so much.
When I came back to India, I saw that all was not lost. But it was weirdly damaged. Like vandals came in with a tractor and just messed with stuff to get their point accross.
SkillsCampPune
Hi Everyone,
I wanted to let you know about SkillsCamp - a training oriented
unconference coming up at Symbiosis University in Pune, India on August 18th.
http://barcamp.org/SkillsCampPune
It will be (un)organized just like the BarCamps we all know and love,
but with a special emphasis on training sessions. This is your
opportunity to share your knowledge and communicate your lightening
intelligence to the community and the world by showing us how to use
some tool, do some aspect of programming, or bend a spoon with the
power of your mind.
We will record video and screencasts for all sessions which will be
edited and made freely available on the internet under a cc license so
all the world can appreciate your generosity, learn from your sage
wisdom, and contact you when they decide it would be easier to
contract your services than climb the same mountains of experience you
have crested.
No skill is too small, no tool too humble to justify a training
session at SkillsCamp. Remember, no matter how junior you feel, there
are hundreds of millions of people on the internet who know less than
you and will appreciate whatever small nuggets of wisdom you have to
share.
Think of NEO and the Kung Fu program in The Matrix. It all starts here !!
August 18th
Symbiosis Institute of Computer Studies and Research,
7th Floor, Atur Centre, Gokhale Cross Road,
Model Colony, Pune -16.
register to attend and give a session on the Wiki.
http://barcamp.org/SkillsCampPune
I wanted to let you know about SkillsCamp - a training oriented
unconference coming up at Symbiosis University in Pune, India on August 18th.
http://barcamp.org/SkillsCampP
It will be (un)organized just like the BarCamps we all know and love,
but with a special emphasis on training sessions. This is your
opportunity to share your knowledge and communicate your lightening
intelligence to the community and the world by showing us how to use
some tool, do some aspect of programming, or bend a spoon with the
power of your mind.
We will record video and screencasts for all sessions which will be
edited and made freely available on the internet under a cc license so
all the world can appreciate your generosity, learn from your sage
wisdom, and contact you when they decide it would be easier to
contract your services than climb the same mountains of experience you
have crested.
No skill is too small, no tool too humble to justify a training
session at SkillsCamp. Remember, no matter how junior you feel, there
are hundreds of millions of people on the internet who know less than
you and will appreciate whatever small nuggets of wisdom you have to
share.
Think of NEO and the Kung Fu program in The Matrix. It all starts here !!
August 18th
Symbiosis Institute of Computer Studies and Research,
7th Floor, Atur Centre, Gokhale Cross Road,
Model Colony, Pune -16.
register to attend and give a session on the Wiki.
http://barcamp.org/SkillsCampP
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
youtube programming class
Hey Guys,
Here's my idea, I'll start a java programming class online using
youtube and a blog. Each lecture will be short - ~ 5 - 10 minutes,
I'll also include links to other resources. Additionally, once we're
comfortable with the basics, we'll play a little with doing code
walk thrus of open source code out on the net.
With each episode, I'll try to give exersizes.
It would be great to get feedback in the form of questions ,
problems you're having, or comments about the pace or what
you'd like to learn. We'll have a mailing list, wiki, blog, and youtube
to communicate with. I'd like to do as much in video as possible.
Personally, I'd like to get past the basics of programming as
quickly as possible, so that we can focus on doing stuff, which
is where all the fun is.
As an ongoing thing, I'd like to create an online video programming
club where we explore new technologies and work on projects together
and what not.
I would like to do the class twice a week, but I will be traveling for
two weeks beginning Friday, so I'll need a little grace getting started.
I'll send out more details in a bit.
freeman
ps.
i've never really taught before, so i'll need alot of grace all around :)
Monday, July 16, 2007
BarCamp Video
A friend in the audience for my talk at barcamppune3 made a video.
The beginning of the video is me talking about the Digital StudyHall
Warning: long & uncut.
I made a couple of videos of sessions I went to.
Setting up Indian Tech Companies Offshore
MangoSpring
Thursday, July 05, 2007
Open Source Education
On my way to the incubator I seem to be spending a fair amount of time discussing scalable education and new models of learning in the age of the Internet. This seems a critical step on the path as I have always maintained that to do the incubator effectively I would need to represent the skills of the developers. The two ways to approach this are to buy the skills or train people in them. The first approach is certainly quicker, but a too often quoted blog entry by the Riya CEO highlights the rising costs of the top tier of Indian developer talent.
Many people see the international salary leveling as an inevitable result of the globalization process. I may agree in the very long term, but think this is a short term blip in the Indian wage scale caused by a shortage of quality technical training.
When I first moved to India, I spent some weeks walking around Calcutta trying to get a feel for India and how I would fit into it. One of the most consistently amusing pictures for me was that the most pervasive advertisements, even in very poor areas was for Java, C & C++ training.
India is a very young country. Over half the population's 1.1 billion people are under 25, and based on the ads I saw in Calcutta, some large percentage of them see IT as a ticket to more money.
Scaling a technical education to this degree is extremely challenging. There simply aren't enough teachers to service this demand in any kind of traditional way.
Reflecting on my own education, I picked up very little of my primary job skills in school. Rather I learned everything on the job, on my own, in response to a project that needed doing. One neat thing about this industry is that everything needed to know to work in it, is freely available online to anyone with the language skills, computers, and motivation to access it.
Over a year ago I found the DigitalStudyHall Project online while researching technologies for cost effectively bringing internet access out to very rural areas. With DSH, what began as research in how to deliver internet access using cds and the postal system evolved into a program to distribute high quality educational videos in local language out to rural schools, and to teach the rural teachers - or in many case students - how to teach with them.
The need they address is a shortage of local teachers with knowledge of many necessary subjects ie. English, math and science. The DSH answer is to video record good private school teachers giving these lessons and then to train the local teacher how to facilitate a class using a tv and dvd player. In this way the local teacher becomes more a learning manager or facilitator rather than a domain expert.
So far their experience has been qualitatively positive.
The DSH model could be applied to provide technical training to a far wider audience than currently has access to it. In the same way DSH records master teachers to create video lectures of the core subjects, the same can be done for recording industry experts and master teachers in the technology field to create and assemble open source technology courseware.
Even with freely available learning material having someone who can assign students tasks, facilitate discussions, and answer questions or get questions answered and follow up with students about difficulties they are having remains critical to the learning process. A teacher in this sense would be more like a project manager in industry than a professor in academia.
This approach addresses the issue of too few local experts willing to teach. The premise is that training facilitators is far easier than training technical experts. And if it works the model could scale to provide quality technical education at a very low cost to many regions around India (and the world) without current access to it.
The call :
I am working with DSH to create video courseware materials in a wide range of technical subjects. Beyond basic programming techniques I would like to delve into many of the tools we use as professional software developers. This includes source control, build systems, testing, debugging, refactoring, the IDE, project mangement, deployment, additional frameworks, etc...
Anyone in Pune interested in collaborating with me in this please get in touch.
Many people see the international salary leveling as an inevitable result of the globalization process. I may agree in the very long term, but think this is a short term blip in the Indian wage scale caused by a shortage of quality technical training.
When I first moved to India, I spent some weeks walking around Calcutta trying to get a feel for India and how I would fit into it. One of the most consistently amusing pictures for me was that the most pervasive advertisements, even in very poor areas was for Java, C & C++ training.
India is a very young country. Over half the population's 1.1 billion people are under 25, and based on the ads I saw in Calcutta, some large percentage of them see IT as a ticket to more money.
Scaling a technical education to this degree is extremely challenging. There simply aren't enough teachers to service this demand in any kind of traditional way.
Reflecting on my own education, I picked up very little of my primary job skills in school. Rather I learned everything on the job, on my own, in response to a project that needed doing. One neat thing about this industry is that everything needed to know to work in it, is freely available online to anyone with the language skills, computers, and motivation to access it.
Over a year ago I found the DigitalStudyHall Project online while researching technologies for cost effectively bringing internet access out to very rural areas. With DSH, what began as research in how to deliver internet access using cds and the postal system evolved into a program to distribute high quality educational videos in local language out to rural schools, and to teach the rural teachers - or in many case students - how to teach with them.
The need they address is a shortage of local teachers with knowledge of many necessary subjects ie. English, math and science. The DSH answer is to video record good private school teachers giving these lessons and then to train the local teacher how to facilitate a class using a tv and dvd player. In this way the local teacher becomes more a learning manager or facilitator rather than a domain expert.
So far their experience has been qualitatively positive.
The DSH model could be applied to provide technical training to a far wider audience than currently has access to it. In the same way DSH records master teachers to create video lectures of the core subjects, the same can be done for recording industry experts and master teachers in the technology field to create and assemble open source technology courseware.
Even with freely available learning material having someone who can assign students tasks, facilitate discussions, and answer questions or get questions answered and follow up with students about difficulties they are having remains critical to the learning process. A teacher in this sense would be more like a project manager in industry than a professor in academia.
This approach addresses the issue of too few local experts willing to teach. The premise is that training facilitators is far easier than training technical experts. And if it works the model could scale to provide quality technical education at a very low cost to many regions around India (and the world) without current access to it.
The call :
I am working with DSH to create video courseware materials in a wide range of technical subjects. Beyond basic programming techniques I would like to delve into many of the tools we use as professional software developers. This includes source control, build systems, testing, debugging, refactoring, the IDE, project mangement, deployment, additional frameworks, etc...
Anyone in Pune interested in collaborating with me in this please get in touch.
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Death is a Choice
In the last few days of my grandma's life, I asked my family how they wanted to die. Here's what they said.
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Resurrection Lily
When my grandma died, a lady at the nursing home gave us a flower that had just bloomed in their garden. At breakfast my mom described the biblical symbolism of the white lily.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)