Tarun Dua - training

Fulltime and Trainee Positions at E2ENetworks

tarundua — Fri, 22 May 2009 13:43:09 +0000

We are an experienced startup team looking for full-time telecommute workers/trainees for some exciting computing infrastructure projects.

Whats the deal :
You get:
1. Equity and stipend/salary depending upon the time commitment you can offer and efficiency of your effort.
2. Experience in building game changing technology
3. Lifetime bragging rights, this revolution was kick started by my company.
4. Learn and utilize highly marketable technologies.
5. These are entry level positions requiring fresh out of the box thinking where everyone starts off as a trainee proves value addition to the team and is only then made fulltime.

What are we looking for :-

Facilities

1. Electrical and/or Electronics Engineers/Research Interns: BEE, HVAC, Energy Star, UPS, Transformers, Power Distribution, Precision AC, excellent grasp of theory and practical applications of what you learned in your engineering.
System hackers who like to take apart old or new computers to learn and think they can build a better box are also welcome to try their hand at newest chipsets and processors.

Marketing and Sales

2. MBAs: Online Marketing PPC/SEM/SEO/Content creation, engaging in 2-way social media conversations, dealing with media contacts and generating buzz/PR hits by responding to questions in non-technical language, qualification of leads and closure of sales calls

Artists

3. Frontend Engineers: Are you one of those few Photoshop/Gimp geeks in your college who also knows how to slice and dice an image into XHTML and like to play with cool Ajax libraries and CSS frameworks.

Geeks/Mega-Geeks

4. System Lords: Do you sleep next to your server(s), are you a Linux/Unix geek who knows Perl or Ruby on Rails. We are waiting for you to take the blue pill and forever live in the matrix of virtual clouds.

Who should apply :-

0. These are remote telecommute positions, we aren't big fans of daily commute and would like to work with people who do not care for a physical office.
1. This is not a training, we are looking for fairly self-motivated individuals who can learn on their own without any hand holding. It doesn't matter if you have no industry experience.
2. You should at the least have access to a broadband connection with no download limits and either your own personal PC where you can use Linux environment (or a Virtual Machine with Linux). Or a University/College infrastructure where you have private diskspace (for storing the code) associated with your login account on a secure file server.
3. You shouldn't be encumbered by any Intellectual property, Proprietary rights and Non-disclosure agreements to work in your own time on any project and be able to assign the moral rights of the same to the company in lieu of equity and/or salary. We may at our discretion release parts of the projects executed under Open Source Licenses.
4. Please make sure you meet the qualifications before applying.

So if you want to contribute to an exciting early stage computing infrastructure startup for equity and/or salary then e-mail us at careers@e2enetworks.com

IBM Research Internships

tarundua — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 09:20:07 +0000

Found this in a mailing list I am subscribed to :-

India Research Lab invites applications for its 2009 summer internship program. The internship opportunities are available in various groups at both New Delhi and Bangalore. The selected students will have the opportunity to work with a prominent researcher in the group, and will be required to spend 10 – 12 weeks at the lab during the summer of 2009. The internship positions will be available in following areas:

• IT Infrastructure Management
• Information Management
• Services Information and Analytics
• High Performance Computing
• Programming Technologies and Software Engineering
• Telecom Research
• Analytics and Optimization"

Innovation sprouts from the fertile ground of inquiry. In IBM Research, our foundation is our wide array of scientific disciplines, award-winning researchers and global labs. And, over the years, we've expanded our ground to include challenging ideas from our colleagues in academic and government research centers as well as from our clients. Come learn who we are and what we do to create innovation that matters for our company and for the world.

## Required Skills - Technical and Non Technical

Knowledge of machine learning, text mining, natural language processing, speech technologies, pattern recognition, data mining, information extraction/retrieval; RDBMS, Java/C++ for prototyping, Principles of computer architecture. Much detailed version available at http://www.research.ibm.com/irl/researchgrps.html

Required
Bachelor's Degree
English: Fluent

PS: No I am not related to IBM in any way, please check with them directly if the positions are still open.

iAccelerator Tech Incubator: April 1 application deadline

freeman — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 07:03:59 +0000

April 1 is the final day to apply for the iAccelerator technology startup incubation program conducted by IIM Ahmedabad's Center for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship and UpStart.in a micro tech venture org made up of successful Silicon Valley Entrepreneurs.

Startups accepted into this program will receive up to 5 Lakh INR in funding along with significant support establishing their companies, getting their business and engineering processes in place and connecting with potential customers, partners and investors. Founders of these companies need to spend May 1 - Sept 1 working from Ahmedabad with the iAccelerator organizers to receive the full benefit of the program.

Dedicated teams of 2 - 5 founders with proven technical talent and a passion and commitment to create successful profitable businesses by solving people's needs with Internet web services or mobile applications are encouraged to apply

Internships at Matchbox Solutions efarm.in

tarundua — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 19:09:35 +0000

Name of Company:

Matchbox solutions (See www.efarm.in )

Nature of Work: Sales, Marketing, Technology, Supply chain, Agriculture & Post harvest technologies , Food processing, Social/Political/Economic studies of bottom of pyramid, Retail design & Franchising.

Contact Information:
Venkat , Founder, 98847 61354 , venky@matchboxsolutions.in

Training duration:
6 - 8 weeks

Location:
Chennai / Tamilnadu

Experience/education required:

UG , PG students . Various disciplines are welcome. Work would involve field visits, interactions with customers etc., and not just cubicle bound. Candidates should also have a passion for working for socially/economically weaker section , underprivileged.

Will this organization pay stipend to the trainees:
Not in general. Based on nature of work, some may get commission (especially those in sales line) if they drive new business. But we do pay in 'veggy currency' - end of day vegetables & fruits to all our staff !! Company would take care of any site visits as part of work.

Last date for applying: Batches start April 1st week, May 1st week, June 1st week. We will freeze filtering for each batch at least a week before start date.

Number of trainees needed: Approx 1-2 in each stream.

Other notes : Outstation / Local candidates need to make own arrangements for stay & travel. Also, would help if people can get their own laptops.

Tarun Dua's usual disclaimer: I am not connected with the company mentioned above please do your own due diligence about the internships.

Internships at moovieshoovie.com

tarundua — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 05:57:42 +0000

MoovieShoovie aims to make a worldwide market for Indian film by reaching overseas audiences through the internet. We are currently in Alpha and aiming to go to Beta in about 4 weeks.
What we can promise is the experience of building a company alongside some very experienced executives : Stanford MBA with 10 years in the internet space, pioneering finance exec and a seasoned BD lead. All are at the top of their game. Our company is re-shaping the way film is distributed and monetized.

Contact Information:
Jyotsna Pattabiraman jpattabi@moovieshoovie.com . Please SMS me at 093433-29186 before calling.

Duration: 8 weeks
Location: Telecommute or Bangalore

Experience required: Not absolutely critical that the person have any kind of educational qualification, but they must love to code and have samples of projects to point me to.

Front-end engineer : With an eye for the user experience, this person will amp up the virality aspect of MoovieShoovie : Ajax, HTML knowledge or experience will be required

Middle / Back - end expert : Build the scalable infrastructure for our referral programs. RoR knowledge, database :MySQL OS : Linux

Stipend: Yes, depends on fit with the company.

Last date for applying: March 20th, 2009

Number of trainees needed: 2

Usual Disclaimer:- I am not connected with this company. I am merely providing the information about available internships. Please contact Jyotsna directly about the queries you may have.

Internships at Nasik for working on Java

tarundua — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 16:03:25 +0000

Shoot your resumes to
Sushrut Bidwai bidwai.sushrut@gmail.com

Looking for BE (CS/IT) students either in final year or 3rd of engineering to work on some high end Java/GWT work.

We are creating lot of open source libraries for Google Web Toolkit and Java. Students will be responsible for coding those libraries.

* BE Final year or 3rd Year.
* Some hands on Java OR very high expertise in C++/C#.
* Good problem solving skills.
* Open source libraries, hence student will have recognition.
* Placed at Nasik or work from home. But will have to spend some time ie a weekend or 2 in Nasik every month.

About the company offering Internships -

Wissen Systems
StartupForStartups
Android Dev Center
GWT Dev Center - (In progress...)

Usual Disclaimer:- I am not connected with this company. I am merely providing the information about available internships. Please contact Sushrut directly about the queries you may have.

Advanced Java Training Online - FREE

freeman — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 09:43:39 +0000

Parag Shah has graciously agreed to mentor a techstart.in club on Advanced Java.

Parag has a master's degree in computer science from the University of North Carolina (USA) and has been working in the software industry for over 10 years and training students in programming for several years as well.

TechStart.in is an experiment in technical training whereby mentors provide students with activities every month which will help them develop their skills beyond the rudimentary concepts taught in school. Students are expected to spend several hours a week working on the assignments and can use the online mailing list or blog comments to ask questions when they need help. Consistent, practical, ongoing practice can help all of us become masters of our field.

Parag's track is called 'Java Insights' and is aimed for people with some core java understanding already who are interested in further developing their skills as advanced java programmers.

Please visit the website and join us as we work together to become masters of our craft.

Internships: finance/economics

tarundua — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 13:03:15 +0000

Interesting internships found here

SEBI
Planning Commission

FOSS.in 2008

tarundua — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 08:16:33 +0000

If you are into software and happen to be close to Bangalore or are willing to travel a bit then this event is highly recommended for the immense amount of learning that can be compressed into just 4 days.

From http://foss.in/faq
<Quote>
Q: Am I qualified to attend FOSS.IN?
A: FOSS.IN is for anyone who is interested in FOSS. However, understand that the focus is contribution to, not use of, FOSS. So if your objective is to contribute (in terms of writing code or documentation, testing, developing artwork, etc.) then FOSS.IN is for you. FOSS.IN has no policy that excludes anyone from attending the event - there is no “qualification” other than your interest in FOSS.
</Quote>

From http://foss.in/about
<Quote>
FOSS.IN is a non-commercial event organised and run entirely by FOSS community volunteers. It does not represent the interests of any commercial entity.
</Quote>

Speaking at NRCFOSS Linux and FOSS Workshop

tarundua — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 11:02:57 +0000

FOSS Workshop at Seth Jai Parkash Mukand Lal Institute of Engineering and Technology (JMIT)
7th (Fri) & 8th (Sat) Nov 2008
A FOSS introductory workshop is being organized to be held at JMIT, Raudaur, for Lecturers/Professors of computer / electronic streams at JMIT and neighboring colleges. Proposed strength is 40 participants, which will also include some student members.

Sarai, CSDS, short-term FLOSS fellowships 2008 , Call for proposals

tarundua — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 09:00:27 +0000

<Quote>
The last date of submission is midnight IST on Sun., Sep. 14th, 2008. The projects will run for a total of about six months, with a final workshop to be held at Sarai, CSDS, Delhi, where the fellows will be expected to present a summary of their work. The total amount of the fellowship will be Rs. 70,000.
</Quote>

Checkout details of how to apply at http://www.sarai.net/fellowships/floss/2008-floss-fellowships-call-for-proposals

Needless to say I am not connected to NIXI, Sarai or CSDS in anyway and this is public service announcement relevant to audience on this blog.

Perl foundation 2008-Q3 Call for Grant Proposals

tarundua — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 05:53:51 +0000

<Quote>
The Perl Foundation is looking at giving some grants ranging from $500 to $3000 in August 2008.
</Quote>

Checkout details of how to apply at http://news.perlfoundation.org/2008/07/2008q3_call_for_grants_proposa.html

Last date to apply is July 31st.

Needless to say I am not connected to Perl Foundation in anyway and this is public service announcement relevant to audience on this blog.

iAccelerator at IIM-A, learnings from 'mentoring' startups - 3, interaction with Sanjeev Bhikchandani and more

tarundua — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 17:15:52 +0000

Do check out what Freeman has written about the iaccelerator. He spent a lot more time at the program than yours truly and has given the incubation process a much deeper thought.

Some media coverage for the generally media shy program.

The iaccelerator 2008 the startup incubation program invited a steady stream of visiting mentors for interactive sessions with the incubatees, a veritable who's who of successful entrepreneurs of India. Yours truly only had the opportunity to listen to Mouthshut, Naukri founders and Sequoia Capital's Sandeep Singhal. I won't be covering the advice offered by Sandeep Singhal to the startup teams as it involves a bit about their secret sauce. I'll cover the startups and their secret weapons once they agree to be covered on this blog.

Just at the end of iaccelerator 2008 program at this moment is that two of the startups out of the five have agreed to be funded by CIIE and the funding quantum is about 50k to 75k level( based on my earlier conversations with CIIE folks) for a reasonable amount of stake and relatively benevolent terms. Its un-confirmed yet and I have shot an e-mail to Aditi(CIIE) for a confirmation.

Sanjeev Bhikchandani basically happened to be present at the IIM-A Entrepreneur's meet and he had a fairly long public Q & A style interaction for a large enough audience at iaccelerator's work area. To his credit he was very candid about what makes Naukri.com and Infoedge's portfolio of sites tick. (keep reading)

He had a lot of advice to the startups at iaccelerator, which included his take on specific business models and target markets that the technology developed by the startups should be focused on.
1. With all the funding eco-system in place it makes sense to really focus on your idea and not worry about bootstrapping it with services kind of revenue. Naukri.com was bootstrapped in a different era.
2. Build defensible Intellectual Property that fills a void in the marketplace and outrun your competitors using that.
3. Make sure a market exists for an idea and is large enough.

Yep the usual advice above but then you can a learn a whole lot more from listening to him speak how he describes Infoedge's business models, technology focus and execution strategy.

Infoedge currently is the biggest web player in India, wildly profitable, incremental revenue adds 90% to the bottomline, cash reserves exceed 350 crore INR. How did they end up trouncing their better funded rivals is probably a story that has been probably covered better elsewhere. Over a period of time Infoedge has learned how to scale better by watching Google's and Yahoo!s of the world and describes itself as a media business with a very strong technology focus. Infoedge doesn't have a core competence in User Generated Content (UGC). It enters into only 'large' media marketplaces with huge corporate advertising budgets which lend themselves to a structured search( its key technology focus), except for Jeevansathi and Brijj all other properties follow the model. Sanjeev is a big believer in strong technology similar to Google and observes that keyword based search results and advertising have a lot more CPM on Infoedge properties than display advertising inventory they consume.

The key to naukri's success as compared to its rivals is that the rivals ( according to Sanjeev ) are stuck in 1998's technology in job search space and Infoedge has been able to leapfrog in effectiveness by using seach and matching technology which he calls Naukri.com's defensible Intellectual Property. He described what he called the virtuous cycle of the classified search business which keeps improving in effectiveness for both candidates and advertisers due to more job matches and more suitable candidates found with the addition of larger volume of advertisers and users, a classic cycle feeding on itself and growing. This he described as a characteristic of media business the one in which addition of users to the system improves effectiveness without adding incrementally to the costs and winner takes all or most. Which is definitely true of classified advertising space in Jobs, Education and Property classifieds search the key focus areas of Infoedge.

(I am not sure I heard him say 'search' but thats how I describe it)

Sanjeev also spoke about what sort of startups Infoedge would be willing invest into if convinced.
1. Should not be in a key focus area that Infoedge already works, so niche Jobsites, Matrimony, Property, Educational classified
2. A very strong management who can execute, Infoedge doesn't have management bandwidth to handle businesses they invest into.
3. Strong defensible Intellectual Property and technology focus
4. Existing marketplace and media business characteristics.

Now its hard to argue with Sanjeev that someone would be able to dislodge Naukri.com in the conventional way of building a better mousetrap since its about the virtuous cycle fed by volume growth. He does see the threat posed by professional social networks like linkedin spreading into India and transforming the indian job market just as it happened in the west. Which explains Infoedge's investment into their Brijj professional social network project to capture the growing social job search marketplace. He also conceded that as of today the engagement of professional indian social networks like Brijj and its rivals have a long way to go in gaining engagement that fun social networks have. Perhaps he is right that the Jobs search marketplace in India is going to look like this for a lot longer and professional social networks don't just yet pose a threat of obsolescence to Job portals.

'Stay Hungry and Stay Foolish' the book by Rashmi Bansal tells more about Sanjeev Bhikchandani's story and more advice from him to entrepreneurs.

Update 24-07-2008: The official word as per Aditi at CIIE is that the funding round beyond iaccelerator-2008 is not yet decided. It'll be done by end of the 3rd month into the program.

Stay Hungry Stay Foolish: 25 IIM-A entrepreneurs profiled by Rashmi Bansal

tarundua — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 10:23:26 +0000

Just finished reading Rashmi Bansal's book 'Stay Hungry Stay Foolish'(ISBN 978-81-904530-1-1) released during the IIMA Entrepreneuers meet organized by CIIE.

<Quote>
'Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish' is the story of 25 such IIM Ahmedabad graduates who chose the rough road of entrepreneurship.
</Quote>
Many of the 25 IIM-A alumni profiled in the book were present at the meet.
The book was released during the entrepreneur's meet and I am not sure if its available for sale yet. But highly recommended. The book is divided into 3 sections

The Believers: IIM-A graduates who took the plunge straight out of IIM-A
The Opportunists: Who saw an opportunity and capitalized on it
The Alternate Vision: Social Entrepreneurs who cared about things beyond money

The book is written in a conversational format with the author thinking aloud before having a conversation with an entrepreneur followed by the conversation and a page of advice from the entrepreneur.

The sheer breadth of advice from entrepreneurs proves one big point, there is no consistent formula for success. There are examples and counter-examples of every strategy in the same book.

There is no other way but to learn from one's own mistakes
It pays to ride a wave in an upturn but then belief in one's ideas is as important to see through the trying times
Bootstrap is good but sometimes there is no other way to scale up without a high leverage investments backed by a VC/PE fund
Jumping straight into the rough is good but so is gaining some experience and building a nice nest egg before taking the plunge
Its good to have equal partnerships with your co-founders but sometimes there needs to be a first amongst equals for smooth functioning
You can plan really well and execute it with mathematical precision but sometimes the best of plans can be bested on first contact with the market
Maintaining independence of your venture ('my baby') for long through the rough road is good but knowing when to let go even when the going is good is needed many times
Government can be a very conservative regulator and prone to knee-jerk policy actions based on emerging events which can kill entrepreneurial ventures but sometimes they are the only ones who are willing to try out something new providing the much needed lifeline to ventures thinking ahead of their times.
Small is beautiful but without scale the actual vision cannot be realised
In all cases IIM-A alumni network helped a lot

Definitely a recommended read for students, as once one of my teachers at my alma mater put it succinctly 'acchi chhokri and achhi naukri is not the only goal in life for everyone'(apologies to women reading this but it applies equally well the other way around).

iAccelerator at IIM-A, first learnings from 'mentoring' startups - 2

tarundua — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 18:22:32 +0000

I have a backlog of what I intend to write about the iAccelerator program and the just concluded Entrepreneur's Meet at IIM-A, both organized by CIIE. So I shall continue to write these posts in chronological order.

Apart from technical mentors like I and Freeman, the iAccelerator program has invited a lot alumni and entrepreneurs to mentor the startup teams by taking up various topics in 2 hour sessions. I'll try and cover a few of these interactions.

Interaction with Faisal Farooqui: Founder of Mouthshut.com

Apart from the usual discussion about how Mouthshut was founded just prior to the dotcom bust and how it survived it, which is documented on the video embed above.

Faisal's 3 hour session with the incubatees included advice on how to be successful as an entreprenuer:-
1. Burn the boats: Being an entrepreneur is not about money, its a by-product. If you have a plan B, thats a sure shot way to fail and actually needing the Plan B.
2. Self esteem and huge ego: Entrepreneurs need to believe in their ideas more than anyone else. Ideas have no value without people willing to back them fully by investing themselves.
3. People Skills, they are in use for anything you do: You need to grow your startup by getting a lot of help from people, whether its partners or employees( paid with equity alone )
4. Hire the best: He recounted that early on he made hiring mistakes at Mouthshut by hiring programmers trained by poorer quality training institutes and not from good engineering colleges and soon learned that as a technology driven company they need to try and hire only the best engineers.
5. Don't die because of end of your cash: Be careful on what you spend your money there might be lower cost alternatives.
6. Apart from technology, learn business.
7. Avoid commuting at all costs, your time is very valuable.

The discussion veered around to how exactly do you 'launch' your web startup to the market without spending money on advertising. Faisal recalled the Buzz mouthshut generated with the friends and family launch of about 600 people who knew about 11 of their employees.

He also recalled the story of how accidentally he pioneered autorickshaw's as the medium to get the word out way back in early 2000s when he started travelling by auto for first time in his life. Now ofcourse we find a whole lot of startups advertising on autorickshaw's with mouthshut itself sticking their ad to almost 12000 autorickshaws every month.

Audience questions included questions like:-

What makes the review conversations on Mouthshut are more objective than say trashy comments on other famous indian sites ?

Discussion on native language(written in roman script) profanity filters on mouthshut.com, legal threats initially while companies didn't agree to the idea of 'defamation' by consumers through mouthshut.

He also expressed his view that startups run by very young people in the audience should not be scared of an old but successful dotcoms in India which aren't doing great in understanding the young people, and worried if he is too old to innovate beyond mouthshut.com. Supporting his hypothesis is his own daughter's favorite site, despite drinking all the mouthshut.com koolaid since birth happens to be youtube.

He also expressed willingness to acquire new kind of websites developed by youngsters who understand their peers better if he has cash available.

The interactive session ended with him gifting a mouthshut.com coffee mug to each participant.

Coming soon:-
A description of interactive session with Sanjeev Bhikchandani: Founder Infoedge(Naukri)

Disabled the comments: Guys please carry on your conversation offline with each other, you already seem to know each other well. -Tarun

iAccelerator at IIM-A, first learnings from 'mentoring' startups - 1

tarundua — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 14:03:29 +0000

So I reached Ahmedabad safely, my doubts about un-rest on the way to Delhi were mostly un-founded.

First impressions of Ahmedabad itself
1. Autorickshaw drivers are very friendly and honest,
2. According to the rick driver the city is secure enough for women to move about the town at 3 AM in the night, now thats a first for an Indian city.
2. Roads from Airport to IIM-A were wide and weren't clogged with traffic and weren't polluted.
3. The city is the heaven for vegetarians, most restaurant chains have removed non-vegetarian from their menu so as not to annoy their vegetarian clientèle.
4. Subway here has one vegetarian 'sub of the day' everyday as no one buys the regular high priced sandwich anyway. A lesson in free market for all those pricey MNC food chains ;-), which no other city in India could have taught them.
5. The city was promised 24 hours power by the government in power and it has been delivered, and now 24 hour municipal water supply has been promised and people are confident it shall be done.
6. The city has everything going for it except an high technology innovation scene.

Now to the real topic of this post, first impressions of the IAccelerator program at IIM-A

1. The CIIE is a remarkably autonomous organization within IIM-A and according to Aditi all the employees are basically entrepreneurs who have either done a startup of their own or intend to do one in future.
2. There is a complete understanding of startup/geek lifestyle and all attempts by CIIE are directed towards facilitating the same instead of opposing it as most IT companies end up doing when they grow big.
3. Startup Teams are a remarkable mix of people from those who have international exposure to technology business and college students who have just completed their 3rd year in college.
4. Freeman has been playing the role of an elderstatesman remarkably well, more than just another mentor, giving his insights into business as well as technology side for all the teams
5. Despite all my years in IT industry, I have learned quite a few things about technology from these young teams and their informed technology choices.

Photographs and more about this gig later.

Internships at Muziboo ( hackers and evangelists)

tarundua — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 10:43:19 +0000

Disclaimer: I am not connected to Muziboo in any way, I am merely spreading the word without being asked to do so by them.

Internships at Muziboo Do checkout this link before you apply. They are looking for hackers and evangelists.

Intern with us

tarundua — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 08:53:59 +0000

We are an experienced startup team looking for interns/parttime/telecommute workers for some exciting web 2.0 projects we are executing.

If you love to use Orkut, Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Flickr etc. and would love to create similarly exciting social networking and Web 2.0 products for the web then here is your chance to be a part of action. Google.com came out of an initiative by two students to create a university wide search. We believe in such initiatives, where there is a compulsion to use the web for something useful.

Whats the deal :
You get:
1. Equity amount depending upon the time commitment you can offer and efficiency of your effort.
2. Experience in bootstrapping a Web 2.0 startup
3. Understanding how to create web scale, high usage, social networking site
3. Lifetime bragging rights, "I helped create this cool site you so love to use"
4. Learn and utilize highly marketable Open Source and technology skills like Ruby on Rails, PostgreSQL, Memcache, nginx, flex etc.

We get:
1. Self motivated force multipliers
2. Potential employee pool from which to hire after we get funded.

What are we looking for :-

1. Hardcore geeks into Perl, Python, Ruby on Rails and even Java or with willingness to rapidly learn Ruby on Rails framework.
2. Creative folks who create publicity material with Adobe Photoshop/Pagemaker/Gimp etc. including websites/brochures/copy during college technical fests and would like to try their hand at Human Computer Interaction workflows for a Web 2.0 site and learn in depth XHTML+CSS+Javascript, AJAX, Jquery, YUI etc.

Who should apply :-

0. These are telecommute positions.
1. This is not a training we are looking for fairly self-motivated individuals who can learn on their own without any hand holding. It doesn't matter if you have no industry experience.
2. You should have access to a broadband connection with no download limits and either your own personal PC where you can use Linux environment (or a Virtual Machine with Linux). Or a University/College infrastructure where you have private diskspace (for storing the code) associated with your login account on a secure file server.
3. You shouldn't be encumbered by any Intellectual property, Proprietary rights and Non-disclosure agreements to work in your own time on any project and be able to assign the moral rights of the same to us in lieu of equity into a startup company. We may at our discretion release parts of the projects executed under Open Source Licenses.

The above Internship positions were filled up and were for 2008 only, they are no longer available.

Great blogs on finance and economics in India

tarundua — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 15:19:12 +0000

Two great blogs on finance and economy focussed on India from BH Economics Blog Awards 2008

1- Ajay Shah's Blog I heard him speak about patents, trademarks and copyrights a long time back at a Linux Delhi meet. Nowadays he is all over media( the portion of media which has a clue ) busting myths propagated by our venerable government and calling spade a spade.
2- Mostly Economics

Startup founders destination Ahmedabad Summer startup camp at IIM-A

tarundua — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 09:20:36 +0000

IIM Ahmedabad has launched a Summer startup camp based on the widely covered summer founders program by Ycombinator and some startup school like activities.

1. What is it that they are offering ?
You(a bunch of geeks in groups of 2 to 4) come to Ahmedabad and write a cool new Web 2.0 'ish application with something unique within 2-3 months while networking with the VCs/Entrepreneurs/Large company types and by the end of 3 months raise some funding for the company you build around that product.

2. What is it that interests them most?
That entrepreneurs are able to attract some top talent from the IIM-A to help them commercialize the idea. Which is splendid as IIM-A is the top management institute in India. The camp is aiming to create these additional exciting paths for these students as well as for entrepreneurs apart from creating some exciting case studies for the program.

3. What do they care about ?
Your ability to create a ready to launch application in 2 months timeframe.

4. Does IIM-A take any stake in the startups that get created ?
No, they are benign. They care to spur geeks to be entrepreneurial, build something cool and want to be able to say 'hey look this was incubated at IIM-A and helped by IIM-A graduates'. Nothing better than a billion dollar corporation incubated at your institute. Call it enlightened self-interest. Perhaps they'll have a shot at being India's Stanford.

5. But can startups really be created for Rs 8000 per person per month?
Ofcourse not. You can't really buy server space to even host a 'working' demo application for that money but perhaps pay for hosting your subversion repository. You can stay hungry and stay foolish until you build your application and after you have raised your first round comes the time to spend money on those Google Adwords and dedicated virtual servers, Amazon storage and whatnot.

6. Microsoft is a partner does that mean say goodbye to OSS web2.0 stack ?
No way, infact the program prefers you use OSS technologies to build something quickly. Anyway its too expensive in terms of time to struggle with Microsoft technologies to rapidly build a scalable web 2.0 startup.

7. Do they pay for travel in and out of Ahmedabad ?
No travel expenses are not covered by the program.

8. Is it the greatest thing to have happened in India ? Arguments from the devil's advocate ?
Its kind of difficult to answer. A lot depends on the quality of networking organized by the program. Rupees 24K and a place to stay is definitely not a great deal for an experienced professional but probably means something for a student whose parents told him he can't have their hard earned money to blow on an unproven 'business' idea. The educational aspects of program also would be very helpful to students I suppose but may not mean much to a seasoned software professional about to quit his job.

The application form for e.g. asks for your percentage shudder!! some of the greatest hackers in India who I know haven't even bothered to complete their graduation. In a way the program expects students or very young professionals to join in since they assume you might have commitments of the type "GRE/GMAT/weddings/mandatory internships"

-- Advice to young professionals and students, please don't hold me responsible if you end up jobless and paisa-less after following my advice.
9. Should a student forgo a campus placement to join in this program ?
Depends on your risk taking ability, If you don't have any family responsibilities which require you to start earning in high 5 figures immediately, I would say sure why not ? If you were smart enough to be placed in a campus interview then after this program you'll be definitely be considered a better bet by smarter product companies/well funded startups even if you weren't able to raise funding for your idea and decided to box it.

10. Should I quit my job in a well established 'outsourcing' company/captive Center of Excellence to startup?
Again depends on your particular circumstances, people like me consider outsourcing companies as a kind of career dead-end in itself. With the dollar-rupee arbitrage disappearing despite frantic efforts of the RBI it might be one of the best decisions you have taken in your life. I would also recommend that you read carefully your Non-disclosure and proprietary rights agreement you signed with your employer before you decide that perhaps a sabbatical would be better than quitting the job.

11. Bonus Tip: You can apply with more than one idea, the program coordinators will choose the best one they like.
Suggestions for camp coordinators
If you really care to see demos of applications built by software professionals provide each team applying with a separate virtual hosting server on demand to allow them to demonstrate their code. It is expensive(time) to host fully functional code on shared hosting hosts where you typically don't control the environment for your application.

About un-answered e-mails

tarundua — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 18:29:31 +0000

Many young professionals complain that their e-mails are not answered by their alumni members or they are ignored on Internet forums/mailing lists. Or when they apply for internship/job no company answers them.

Could it be that they chose a wrong kind of e-mail address.

A few tips Deepak Goel has on how to choose an email ID.

Yet another reason for your emails going un-answered may have to do with using SMS-speak or bad grammar in your e-mails. While it may possibly shorten the time for typing an e-mail it makes it relatively un-readable to busy professionals. Running your emails through a spell-check is a good idea.

Typing in ALLCAPS is considered the text equivalent of shouting.

And one shouldn't write e-mails with attached resumes to random people in random companies unless you have some relevant ideas as to what that company/organization does and if it fits well with what you want to do.

GNU project ideas for Google Summer of Code

tarundua — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 13:36:40 +0000

Around march Google organizes Summer of Code targeted at students by funding Open Source Projects to enable them to pay interns who deliver on specific features/projects. GNU amongst many other OSS projects participates in the program.

From GNU GSoC project ideas page

<Quote>
This page has the project suggestions for GNU's participation in Google Summer of Code 2008. Project proposals for 2006 and 2007 are archived separately.

STUDENTS - BEFORE YOU SUBMIT YOUR PROJECT PROPOSAL:

Please read the GNU Project's guidelines for Summer of Code projects.

Most importantly, please make sure you include all the information requested. If you have questions, please ask
summer-of-code@gnu.org.

</Quote>

PS: I am not connected to GNU, Google or GSoC

Experienced startup team looking for ace front-end designer

tarundua — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 12:29:42 +0000

<Quote>

Seeking a talented front end web designer to join an experienced start-up team. Primary responsibility will be to assist in development of creative solutions in web interface design and data visualization for a completely new web application. While we value experience and a proven track record, what we value even more is fresh ideas and a strong desire to create new solutions for navigating data in today's Web 2.0 environment.

A strong portfolio and work experience are welcome, but we're really looking for a passionate maverick with attention to detail. The technical skills we would also favor include (note that the candidate needs to be comfortable, not an expert, in these areas):

- Experience in Adobe Flash 8/9 Platform (Design, Components, Animation)
- Skilled with GIMP, Adobe Photoshop / Illustrator
- Ability to take designs from flat file to high standard XHTML/CSS compliance quickly and in multiple environments.
- Innovative ideas and familiarity with the issues involved in data visualization and interface design;

Nice to Haves:
- Experience in Actionscript, especially working together with server-side data;
- Working knowledge of Javascript (and ideally AJAX)
- Understanding of usability, workflow of Web 2.0 platforms

This position would be ideal for an upcoming young designer/design student looking for an opportunity to create impact. We are a globally-oriented and merit-based organization, with exciting job growth opportunities. We believe in hiring great talent and compensating accordingly.

If you feel these criteria match you,please contact us at job-601310144 at craigslist dot org

Telecommuting is ok.
This is a part-time, contract job.

</Quote>

OWASP Summer of code 2008

tarundua — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 07:09:06 +0000

OWASP Summer of Code for these projects has an application deadline till 25th March 2008. They have a tentative budget of 100K USD. About OWASP

PS: I am not connected to OWASP in any way.

Civicspace / Drupal.org Internship Program

tarundua — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 02:32:19 +0000

Name of Organization: Drupal.org
Coordinator(s): Zack Rosen
Nature of Work: Open Source Software
Domain: Content and Community management Web platform
Training duration: 8 Weeks to 6 Months with possibility of contributing during Minor and Major Projects
Location: Telecommute, Internet Connectivity required
Experience required : PHP, MySQL
Stipend: Limited number of stipends upto Rs. 8000
Number of trainees needed: 10
Other Requirements: PC at home with Linux+Apache+PHP+MySQL installed
Sponsorships and Stipends for the Project: Murray Internet and
Education fund
Apply at http://drupal.in/training

Brief Introduction to the Civicspace / Drupal.org Internship Program:

The open-source Drupal project is exploding: 75,000+ websites, 350
unique core contributers, 160+ employed professionals amongst 30+
consulting companies. All metrics, usage, developers, and
contributions are growing exponentially.

Drupal is quickly establishing itself as an extremely important and
powerful platform technology. Like Linux, Apache, MySql, and PHP
below it in the stack, Drupal is provides layer of indispensable
functionality web developers can deploy and extend to create myriad's
of websites and web services: education, community, ecommerce, media
and - pick a market vertical that leverages the web and chances are
Drupal is being actively used and is quickly bootstrapping it's way
up-market.

Training Coordination Page

tarundua — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 09:05:57 +0000

The corporates, Linux User Groups(and other professional bodies), individual mentors willing to offer training for students in India can post positions

Summer trainees and interns please post your comments at Summer Training in India page

Terms and Conditions:-
0. You need to register to make a comment post on this blog

1. Tarun Dua shall in no case be held liable for anything under any circumstances in connection with any summer training offered using this page niether by the trainees or by organizations/individuals offering training.

2. Training Offers where trainees need to pay will be deleted from this page, please post summer training offers only if you are either offering a stipend or atleast not charging the trainees any fee.

3. Please use the following format to offer summer training

Name of Company, Organization or Individual Mentor:
Nature of Work: Software, Open Source(Name of Open Source project) or Specific Domain(e.g Marketing):
Contact Information(Name of Contact Person, E-mail/Telephone Number) and appropriate time to call:
Training duration e.g. 8 Weeks/6 Months:
Location(e.g. Telecommute, Part-Telecommute, Delhi etc.):
Experience required(e.g should know Java/PHP/Perl or for B. Tech students only etc.) to be able to successfully complete training:
Will you or your organization pay stipend to the trainees:
Last date for applying:
Number of trainees needed:

Summer Training and Internship in India

tarundua — Sun, 07 Aug 2005 17:58:11 +0000

Update 4-JUN-2008 Comments closed on this page. Working to come up with an alternative soon. Subscribe to the newsletter in the meanwhile.

Article Begins Here:-
The Engineering and Professional graduate programs in India include Summer Training with the following objectives
* Correlate courses of study with the way industry or potential workplace operates its business or work using technology.
* Work on implementing what has been learned in school, especially true for Computer Science under-graduates.

The engineering and professional courses including MCA, B.Tech, B.E., BCA amongst others during 2004-5 had an estimated half a million under-graduates needing internship in fields of Computer Science, Electrical and Electronics, Mechanical, Civil, Bio-Informatics disciplines every year. The students for professional programs are required as a part of the courses to undergo a 8 week or 6 month training.

For a long time after independence(India) the lack of industrialization meant that many of these young professionals had to go without proper training during internship period earmarked in the under-graduate programs. The world moves from industrial age to intellectual property based wealth generation structures i.e. factories replaced by call-centers and technology companies viz. chip design, software and bio-informatics. Tools for generating this wealth in the form of software, [patents] and documented processes is available easily in the hands of people hitherto on the wrong side of longitudes and time-zones or urban-rural divides.

In today's world the interns or trainees, the future professionals need to re-orient the traditional approach to searching for a training or internship.

The traditional approach being defined as :-

1. Look for name brands and try and get a Training Certificate.
2. Put your dad-mom 's, uncle's and aunt's social network to work and land an internship. This normally gets you a certificate and usually not much as else as someone is merely obliging your relatives.
3. Your seniors sometimes can help place interns in the companies they work for, this generally works if you happen to belong to elite institutes like IITs, IIITs and NITs.
4. Your institutes placement cell:- Unless you need a 6-month training placement, the companies normally don't bother offering training through placement cell. Again works better if yours is an elite institute.
5. Paid training to learn a new technology or a knowledge upgrade at an educational institution of repute like NITs which organize training programs for their students and accept outside students to work at their labs. This type of a training is a useful upgrade to theoretical knowledge but actually counts as "back to classroom" rather than an internship.
6. Training under a Full Professor/Researcher: a rarity in the stream of Computer Science, most of them went to the industry to earn their megabucks or went to US to pursue further research.
The best that this approach gets you is:-

After starting to look for summer training 2-3 months before you need to start it and finally reach a good enough company or workplace just in time or delayed by a week or two. Having reached a name brand or the coveted big corp, most interns end up doing menial chores no one else wants to do.

The interns are either ignored or given totally useless jobs like inventorying the IT equipment, making a survey of problems faced by home-owners in a factory owned residential area for its workers, making spreadsheets etc under the ruse that they are not qualified to handle a real job of programming or its equivalent in other areas of work.

The brave new world demands a radical new approach to summer training or internship. US of A is still the leader of Information Technology and contrary to popular belief it is not about to surrender its technology leadership to India or China anytime soon. Slashdot a popular site for technologists with a primarily US based audience lists some of the things which interns did this summer here.
Some of these things apply not only to the interns in US but are globally applicable.
In the indian context, this might be a good strategy with variations suiting individual tastes, essentially it boils down to.

1. Learn Open Source technology as a user of technology.
2. Apply that technology to improve the college infrastructure, remember those creaky Novell file servers or virus ridden windows backend boxes can be replaced by good Open Source alternatives.
OR
3. Look out for bounty programs from Open Software sites and add new features to open source softwares and earn money in the process of learning something.
4. Or scratch your favorite itch to create something new which reaches thousands of downloads as soon as the beta is out.
5. Watch out for influential Open Source organizations like your local Linux User Groups or Development oriented groups and convince the managements of such organizations to offer you certificates of training for releasing Open Source projects (new or patches) under their patronage. This is a win-win for Linux User Groups as well as interns. Typically a few vastly superior geek minds can be found at the Linux User Group mailing lists and can be convinced into mentoring you during the summer training period and possibly beyond it.
5. Setup a development environment using free software, not only because it is a richer environment for developers and there is a lot more to learn on a free development platform but also because many of your future employers consider these as essential skills. At the minimum try and use a version control system like RCS(if not CVS). A hotshot IDE like Eclipse, and webserver like Apache or Tomcat. Typical unix like environments such as Linux are extremely rich in available documentation and sophisticated tools. It is a reasonable assumption that a potential developer needs to learn to use unix for any serious shot at the programming career.
6. Get well worded endorsements from your mentor and other developers of Open Source projects to which you contributed to, and snapshots of CVSWeb GUI's showing your source commits accepted for opensource projects to include into your project reports for that extra effect at the training/internship viva back at your institutes.

More articles advocating taking control of your own Internship

The Virtual Internship: Take Control of Your Future by Becoming an Open Source Developer

The Virtual Referral: Mitigating Risk by Hiring Open Source Developers

More interesting ideas for summer training and what to prepare for in life:-
Summer founders program: now closed
Why hiring is obsolete
A career path for a developer as opposed to becoming a manager.

Update: I noticed atleast a few people offering Summer Training to students. Please do so at
Training Offers after reading the instructions.

Software Developer: Career Path

tarundua — Tue, 26 Jul 2005 18:33:17 +0000

This was found here

Software Quality Levels

Software, like all things, has quality. Which scenarios describe the projects you've worked on? Which of these are familiar? Which have you over come through experience?

1. Works when no one is watching

When the requirements are completely out of control, many programmers celebrate even having reached this point.

2. Works if you do it just right

Too many applications, most not written in Perl, make it to this point and stop cold. Forget reusable, this isn't even usable.

3. Trying most things once, it doesn't break

You may be tempted to give a software demo in front of a crowded auditorium at this point. Don't.

4. Other people tried it, and it seems to work

Software released to the community often starts at this point. Before this point, there isn't enough benefit for it to be worthwhile for them to fix your bugs.

5. Been in production for a while, and you're running out of bugs to fix

Most perl programs quickly shoot to level 5, and stop. Level 5 is a good level. Since its really about the users, not the developers, Perl has traditionally been great for end users.

6. Other programmers are adding to it, so you made the code understandable

Other programs can incorporate this program into theirs, or vice versa, and benefit from your work.

7. A lot of people are working on it, so you made it modular and well laid out logically

Resistant to damage caused by new features, different requirements, and new programmers. In a lot of ways, like a Spider Plant: fractal, prolific, and cute.

8. It has turned into a generic framework for doing things of this kind, and has been separated from early assumption

Different products that do the same thing but better are different, but are based on this class, can easily be created.

9. Hordes of the nit-pickiest people on the net have picked every last nit out of it

College classes are dedicated to exploring your code. Aspiring programmers marvel at the sheer beauty of it.

Most programmers are smart and hard working. Things go wrong mysteriously. Changing requirements stress the design of a program. A program at level 5 can quickly turn into a level 2 program, if people start working on it who don't understand the entire design, or the original design doesn't take into account the direction it takes into the future and no one adapts the design. This is the primary reason to shoot for a level 7 program. Having net-god status thrust upon you and having to live up to it, or attempting to attain net-god status is the primary reason to shoot for level 9. Of course, if the program is a few lines long, none of this amounts to a hill of beans.

Software does not wear out in the traditional sense of machinery with moving parts. However, software is constantly being used in ways its authors never expected (often uncovering errors), and end users are constantly demanding extensions to their software.

An interesting idea on Computer Based Trainer

tarundua — Sat, 26 Mar 2005 01:38:41 +0000

It is sometimes very interesting to watch a geek who is very productive with the tools he/she is using by just recording the continuous motion on the screen and even better to have the audio interleaved with the screen motion. This is one of the cheapest and most effective ways of introducing how to use a particularly complex piece of software. On windows there are one or two good screen-cams with voice recording support available. However that doesn't interest me, there are plenty of good CBTs out there all targeted towards windows. With linux I could find two particularly good softwares with some suggestions from fellow geeks at #linux-india on Freenode for doing just that.
Xvidcap: which doesn't exactly rock on my slow machine but can produce a reasonably good copy at lower frame-rates. Another particularly good one is vnc2swf which uses a novel concept of converting the output of vnc to a flash video. I am sure the addition of sound later would be trivial. Thus one can actually go ahead and create CBTs for the favourite Open Source softwares in a jiffy.