Variety is the Spice of Life…

I never anticipated so much of action in my life during holidays when I am sitting at Bangalore with no internships at hand(I’m a little lazy for it now since this would probably be my last year of a month-long holidays). Life was all about eating,sleeping,computer and television. Life minus friends and college(No matter how much we criticise our college, we just love it..na??) could be really boring sometimes.

The action packed week started with me taking an extra inning - I decided to get blogging. Hurray.. I wrote my first blog ever and received quite a few compliments. I did get a few suggestions for improvement too and I promise to take them seriously from here on. The hectic week included a few guests coming over where I tried my best to brush up my hospitality skills by being a good host making sure things are in place and in order(I tried my best to make my house look like a museum). Quality family time and a trip to college was the key for the next few days.

Amidst all this action, I always had a few apprehensions regarding Yahoo Hack 2011. The thought of “How am I going to be part of a team that needs me and with whom I can work along and create a successful hack by the end of the next week” kept flowing in me. I even started constantly checking the wiki page exclusively created for this event so that I can be updated with the event details. I tried talking to a few seniors in college like Kiran, Rahul and Ganesh to see how they could help me out.

To get rid of all the tensions, I even planned a fun trip to Mysore but..oops…that did not work out either. The plan was cancelled at the last minute. A horrid state to be in.. As time passed, I realised that it was certainly a blessing in disguise. I decided to attend the Yahoo Pre Open Hack Mixer to give myself a break and ease some tensions. I was confident that I was going to get some information on how I could prepare for the all important event lined up next week.

I decided to Google the route to the venue(Bagmane Tech Park) after carefully printing out my entry ticket. Alas! It all sounded so new to me.. How was I going to travel to a place that I had never even heard of, with no one I know for company? I was reminded of the solitary reaper…Nevertheless, I gathered some courage to attend the talk and thankfully I was on the right track.
The talks were interesting. The event was beautifully organized and put together. The Yahoo team that was present consisted of a few great minds letting us know about the APIs and Interfaces. An informative, informal and innovative session of two hours did a lot of good to me. For most of the event, I was a loner sitting quietly at my chair and listening to all that the mentors had to say, making notes of the important points to remember.

The talk started with Mr Bala introducing us to Yahoo Hack and sharing a few experiences from last year. Breaking a problem into pieces and solving them successfully, making sure the problem is relevant, applicable and appealing to the audience and the importance of a good story telling were the areas he stressed upon. We had another Yahoo mentor telling us about the key challenges of the industry with respect to Entertainment, Mobile and Geo-locations.

Mr. Saurabh Sahni enlightened us with the Yahoo Open Stack and YQL emphasizing on the importance of data,access and interface to build a web hack. An interesting slideshow was presented leaving us all to realize how much we can play around with YQL. The troubles of finding an API, reading the documentation, getting access using keys, finding data points all seemed like problems of the past.

Mr. Harsha Vashisht emphasized on using Yahoo User Interfaces which makes our life simpler to create a front end. He focused on the interface widgets like data sources, auto complete, data charts to name a few(very few). He gave us references to these examples and also demonstrated a few.
Mr Prajwal informed us about YQL-Geo Library letting us know how the lat-long of a place can be found using various references like GPS,HTML 5 navigator, IP Sniffing, W3C Geolocation APi etc. He also stressed on placemaker and placefinder APIs.
Mr Dutta acquainted us with BOSS and OAuth giving us a few examples and references.
Mr. Sudar, then familiarized us with Hardware Hacks quoting a few examples of how it can be implemented and promised a Getting Started session on 30th July.

The talks were followed by a Q&A session and I was still alone. The interesting part of most sessions is often the networking session. They say “Patience is the Best Virtue” and I was rewared for my patience. I found a partner, a group, a team with which I can hack the next week..Ahh…What a relief it was!!

All the world’s a stage and we are merely players. After the drama this week, I am eagerly waiting for the next weekend to end my semester holidays on a high and start my final year of engineering on a positive note.

With all these events spicing up my life, I am both excited and nervous for the all important Yahoo! Open Hack 2011.

Making hay while the sun shines...

The life of an engineering student is often wasted with classes,assignments and exams...The importance of practical training and industry exposure is missing in our education system. But who am I to question the system? I am not even a graduate yet. I decided to not merely be a drop in the ocean but to be responsible for the course of the stream.I did something differently to decide my own journey.( I must admit Shiv Khera's advice of doing things differently than doing different things certainly helps.)

I decided to attend seminars in my free time(especially in holidays) both to have fun and broaden my horizon. Make hay while the sun shines kept ringing in my ears. I started off by deviating(slightly) from technology. I decided to attend a product management workshop at IIM-B throwing some light on Technology Adoption Life Cycle. The lecture kicked off with an interesting presentation stressing on INNOVATION by Mr.Suhas Kelkar from BMC!! I thought that Saturday morning could not have started in on a better note. This is when I realised that I do not need to necessarily invent something to innovate. The talk by Mr.S. Ramesh of Confianzys Consulting was based on TALC model which has innumerable applications in the field of technology. Google+ , Microsoft, Sony vs JVC, Amazon Kindle were a few of the case studies discussed. I would certainly thank Mr.Ravi Padaki from IPMA for this experience.

The lecture was the serious part. The element of fun was the journey to IIM-B,sitting in the Management Development Centre where the classess in "3 idiots" were shot, having a look at the tank which has a few epic scenes from the movie and the library where the lesson of not merely mugging but enjoying learning was potrayed(remember how Chamatkaar became Balaatkar). The journey ended with having a taste of the food of the IIM-B canteen!! The day followed with having some more fun spending time with seniors who shared their experiences giving us guidance as to how we can shape our future.

We have all heard about "Opportunity strikes the door only once." But exactly a week later, I got my second opportunity. An experience to be among the software testers having great industry experience at the monthly testers' meet. I was nervous with loads of apprehensions as to what would be in store for me at a place where the best of the best interact. What would I, a college student, understand and gain from it?

Nevertheless, I chose to strike the iron as it was hot. I went ahead and attended the meet. Not surprisingly, my friend and me were the only college students there. The biggest positive was that at no point did we feel out of place. Both of us could perfectly relate to the talk by the VP of Mindtree, Mrs. Sylvia Veeraraghavan. She gave us presentations on testing and its applications. More importantly, she shared valuable experiences of her life making it a great intro for the long session ahead.We even exchanged a few words with her over a cup of tea.

The moment of inspiration had still not arrived. We were then introduced to the best tester..also the best test blogger from India, Mr. Pradeep Soundararajan, the co-founder and director of Moolya Software Testing Pvt Ltd. Two hours of his stage presence seemed like 20 mins.More importantly, my inspiration to start a blog. I learnt many lessons from him. The best of all was importance of lateral thinking and to never underestimate yourself(even in front of your boss) when you feel you are doing the right thing(Though, I agree more with Mr Rahul- We need the skills too).. The talk was certainly about testers and test blogging but on analysis, I learnt that all that he spoke about can be applied to life,at large.Thanks to Mr.Rahul Verma and the "Tester Tested".

We always got an edge over the others in both the seminars for being college students in a pool of industry experts. And I admit, we loved it.

Waiting to attend a few more events like these in the coming weeks before the education system loads me again with exams,projects and placements in my final year of engineering. I hope, I can convincingly say "I'm an Engineer",a year later, when I have some wealth of practical experience in addition to the theoretical knowledge that I flood my brain with!!

Right now, Yahoo Hack is on the cards for me!!

P.S :
1. This is my first post in my new blog. I am a novice and completely open to criticism. Pardon me for grammatical errors,if any.
2. Thanks to the Tester Tested for inspiring me to do this.( You added Moolya in my life..Yes, I found my guru..Just like how you found JB and MB).
3. Hope I have the patience and skills to continue blogging and sharing my experiences.