Preface
First of all thanks to my friend Safil for the post title. You will come to know the history of name reading forward.
Day before yesterday(28Jun2012) when we were doing true agile development (true agile means the team is into a room and develop the application without much external disturbances) one of my colleague came and said 'An event called Google IO is going to happen in our Infopark this weekend'.As I was in the mood of creating a framework, I didn't give much attention to that. I replied like, I may or may not attend. But yesterday when I checked the link, I was surprised. As you all know, Google IO is a big event conducted by Google to demonstrate their new technologies. I don't think in the near future, I will get a chance to attend the original event as I am working in Kochi and my company will not sponsor me because I am mainly into Microsoft technology stack. So why should I miss such an event which I can attend near to my workplace. This event is Google IO Extented. So normally we can expect more, than in the original :-) .Yes I cancelled all the weekend programs including my usual trip to native and started registration process.
Oh. The first hurdle came.Registration has been closed. But there are seats available. Also there was a link present at the registration page to contact the sponsors and its MindSoft Global .I got a very fast response from them. They asked my mobile number and sent me the ticket. Again by end of day, I got a call from them to confirm my presence. Thanks to Jisha, I think that is the name of the lady who helped me. Then the next problem came .The event starts at 9AM .That is the time, when I normally think whether I should wake up or not.Anyway decided to try level best.
Event started
As sun is punctual in it's duties, the day came and I reached there as usual at 9:15AM. Just 15mins late. The event was not yet started. People are standing here and there. The normal Kochi programmer faces are there along with some faces of my colleagues. Wow there are enough tech enthusiasts in my company too. There was a circle formed by the standing people which means Praseed Pai is in the center :-) .The hall is A/C so didn't spend much time at the doors.
The event started by around 9:45AM. One lady gave introduction to the event and she handed over stage to a guy with long hair,modern look. Simply saying in colloquial English a Yo-Yo guy. His entire look says that he cannot be a programmer, QA analyst or manager.50% chance is there for a UX guy. So we can conclude him as an external event management team member. The next unforgettable thing started from there. He just started talking in pure Malayalam.
Wow nice. As it is Google related program we can expect unexpected. May be Google is introducing a new technology where we can code in our own language. As everybody love their mother tongue, I also love my mother tongue Malayalam and even I am running a Malayalam blog. But why this people whispering each other?
Oh this is not something from Google. He just speaks in Malayalam .I don't think it because he cannot speak in English. May be he is hired to conduct the event in Malayalam. This is an technical event where there will be people from different states of India who don't understand the language used in other states. Yes that is correct.He asked the audience to introduce themselves and the second guy introduced himself as a developer from Culcutta ,West Bengal. Then the whispering became side talks and one of my friends Shalvin even requested him to talk in English. But it didn't change .The introduction of Audience had completed and he started some small games such as gifts for answering funny questions and tongue twisters and all purely in Malayalam. One of the audience even responded like I am not here to play games.
Ok. I think its a high level manager, somebody came and explained the situation. The guy who is supposed to come here from Chennai GUG was not able to make it. But he will be addressing through Google hangout. Wow that is great. The first time I am going to see the hang out in action .To be frank Google+ is the only product which I cannot digest and use.
Hi Event management guy, we are extremely sorry if that incident made you feel bad. We were not expecting something what you are best in. May be some expectation setting went wrong. All the best..
What I(We) expected?
So what we expected .Oh sorry I should talk about my expectation. May be because I have only seen the Microsoft related events such as K-MUG sessions, my expectation was, there will be some guys who is closely working with Google technologies such as Android,Cloud,etc... and they will take interesting technological sessions and demonstrate Google's new technology innovations and give some insights to what google is working on, how google does all these things etc...
Since there were no talks about the agenda, I had to ask what is the agenda. The agenda was
- Teleconference with GUG Chennai Community Manager.
- Video streaming of original Google IO 2012 videos from Youtube through projector.
- A session on open source by Cochin university professor Ignatius Kunjumon
- Showcasing innovative technology products in the locality.
- Android Oven.
- Security through smart phone.
- Apps by MindSoft.
Hangout with Karthik, GUG community manager Chennai
He was supposed to be here.But due to other GUG activities in Chennai he was not able to. If my googling skills are still strong, he runs a website and tweets frequently. He gave a brief introduction about the GUG communities and the start of Kochi GUG. This event is conducted as part of getting more reach to Kochi GUG. We are in India and as usual there were streaming issues due to internet connectivity and it didn't go in an interactive manner. I believe he will soon come to Kochi to give another enthusiastic session.
After this session there was a Tea break.
Google IO 2012 video streaming in projector
I had downloaded the videos from youtube .But didn't get a chance to watch due to other activities. So decided to watch it in this event. There were people in the same situation and for us this was good. No questions no interactions. Good time to sleep, if you are not interested.
As you know, it is interesting for developers in the beginning when they talk about new Android version 4.1 Jelly Bean. Especially notification changes, cloud notification support,incremental app updates from play store, improved audio etc...But simply saying it is a bug fixed / performance tuned version of 4.0 ICS same like Win 7 came after Vista.
If you are a gadget freak, you will be excited to hear about the new Google tablet and the features in it such as JellyBean, Offline voice recognition, Google Now etc...Google now gives you the power to fire your personal assistant. Didn't understand? Google Now is the application which connects with all sorts of data in Google such as your calendar, maps, transit etc.. and uses the same to help you to take decisions. For example if you are in restaurant and you have to attend a meeting in 10 mins, it will tell you how to reach there? By bus or train or in Car and the route to take. ie you are holding the time in your hand or a program / device is controlling you. But I don't know what will happen to this calculations, if the food you had last time is not digested and caused a 'call of nature'.
After that the video became marketing. A ball named Nexus Q to play music, stream multimedia content from Google Play to your house hold players. Social streaming in Nexus Q enables more than one person to control the TV. If multiple people starts controlling the media player in a normal Indian liquor parties, what will be the minimum time to start people attacking each other for their favorite? God knows.
The Google identity came after this. Some guys from Google jumped from sky and took bi-cycles to ride into the stage. It is true that we can do something like this, if we works in Google. All they were wearing a special type of glass which has camera in the right side. The lady who was there in stage explains or marketing that glass by saying you can take real time moments such as the moment baby looks at Mom's eyes,photos from the tennis player's view angle etc...Isn't it the old spy cam which we are using for years? I wish they would have demoed the terminator type head mount display glass
A session on open source by Ignatius Kunjumon
This was the first 'human in front of' session and conducted by Prof Ignatius Kunjumon from CUSAT. I though he would first tell so many drawbacks about Microsoft and capitalism finally ask or compel everybody to switch over to Linux like any other open source advocates. But that didn't happen. He started with open source and jumped to his favorite subject Python. He gave links to his python works in Github. I had used python scripts in my first company to run the builds and observed that it is really fast to compile and create MSIs. The main message which I got from him is something else.
Code for yourself before you code for others.
This is simple. Make your life easier with your programs before you make others life easier. If you cannot make your life easier with your programs how can you write code to make others life easier.Every developer should think on this.
Innovative Products - Android Microwave Oven
The main take away for me from the event is the idea of MAID. This is the name they have given to their Android oven. This idea is from the young heads of SectorQube. The company deserves special congrats for encouraging and supporting the innovative ideas of it's employees.I wish let it be another Google or more than Google.One more interesting part is this company is started by young innovative just passed out students. Means there is no need to wait for permissions or financial support from bald headed managers to execute an innovation.
Also there is a funny story behind the birth of this idea. I thought I can find a link to that story so that you can read in their own words. But unfortunately, I was not able to find. So according to my understanding here is the story.
Harthal day is celebrated as national holiday in Kerala and it is normal to have 2-3 harthals / month .Oh I forgot to explain about the harthal. It is the way to show protest against government. There are enough political parties here and they will call for harthal even if there are reasons or not. If somebody declared that tomorrow it is harthal, people will plan the harthal day. Parties, house repairing, shop innovations, visits to relatives etc... Because on the harthal day everything including restaurants and transportation will be shut off except hospitals & IT companies. IT companies here refers to software development, BPO, call center support etc...The food and everything else needs to be collected on the day before harthal.
Friends in SectorQube were coding a game targeted for Keralites and suddenly a harthal was declared. So they decided to launch on that day because people will be at home and they can enjoy playing the game. They completed game late night and after that when they look for food, there were nothing left which is ready to eat. They had only a Microwave oven and nobody knows how to cook in oven. All are IT geeks and they used their google skills to download the recipes but those didn't help them since they don't know how to cook. That night passed with hungry stomachs and next morning the idea of MAID had born to help people like them from starving
What is the moral of the story? Starve for one night to get innovative ideas :-)
Innovative product - Sentinel security
This is from the same company MindHelix which created another innovative product for Indians called Tuk-Tuk meter. They observed Oh not only they, we all Indians can usually see that people are arguing with Taxi / Auto drivers regarding they fare. This software will help us to get an idea about fare so that we can argue better and even call Police to solve the issue. It works based on GPS and calculates the fare using local rates.
This time the innovation is to secure women and children from attacks and is called Sentinel .It works with a simple button. When the user feels that she/he is lost, or somebody suspected is behind them simple press that button. Immediately mail/sms/whatever will go to concerned parties such as Police / family / friends etc...according to the configuration.
The people behind this even tells that,this cannot assure 100% security because it is based on so many other factors such as mode of attack, the internet availability,battery charge and any downtime in server. They host their services in Windows cloud and we all knew what happened to Windows Azure on leap day this year. But they will be happy, if their innovation saves at least one life.
Products from MindSoft
MindSoft demoed some of their products such as mobile version of their Inventory management product, MyFin a personal financial manager just like all the other free softwares in the market etc...
Conclusion
When we conducted K-MUG events in our office there were similar incidents like A/C was not enough for the hall, lack of internet connectivity etc...But MindSoft did it well. Thanks to all guys in MindSoft for organizing such an event especially the tea & lunch. Expecting more from you guys in future. (Not better food but the events). Keep rocking...
Hope the title will not hurt anybody and will take it in the sense. If not please let me know.
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