Bar Camp Hyderabad: Apr, 2006
Coming to the content part. I was surprized to see the amount of information flow that happened during the presentations. Many ppl in the industry are amazing too was my conclusion, really. There were presentations by Ramesh and Jay from Pramati which gave a broad overview of Web 2.0 and opportunities in the space respectively.
There was a presentation by Rajan on how attention rather than information is the new thing to focus in Web 2.0, Pramati guys spoke about XForm which I only heard of earlier, the presentation was really informative.
The Cordsys guys then spoke about the whole overview of limitation of HTML, then introducing XForm based artichitecture and gave a wonderful demo of their product which is like a nice GUI designer toolkit running over web browser.
Prof. Kamal from IIIT spoke about the MeraSystem project. Which he explained wonderfully well and removed lots of confussion I had about the whole WebOS thing. The main focus of the webOS is on centralizing data and not processing alone as is mostly interpretted.
Sumeet from Yahoo then spoke about Yahoo UI libraries, and a lot more about interesting use of some popular opensource products at yahoo and Yahoo’s Contribution back to community. Pretty interesting to know that they use MySql for some of their heavy backends and Php quite extensively. New terms like JSON, Serealized PHP and others also popped up.
Kiran from Pramati spoke about the Eclipse in the Web 2.0 space and Usability impact. Sometime in middle there was talk by Sharad Solanki on the Tangible User Interface and Web 2.0 interface, pretty interesting comparision and conclusions to take home.
Kiran from Pramati spoke about the Eclipse in the Web 2.0 space and Usability impact. Sometime in middle there was talk by Sharad Solanki on the Tangible User Interface and Web 2.0 interface, pretty interesting comparision and conclusions to take home.
100_3171.JPG100_3190.JPG
French Course experience
Recently we had this French course conducted at IIIT Hyderabad. The profs were from CIEFL. I have been posting a lot about the course in earlier posts. I thought I would share some conclusions I derive from the course.
In the beginning when I sent a mail asking for names I got around 120 replies. Yes I knew many of them just wanted to keep it as backup, so I estimated the number of serious students to be around 60. Unfortunately the course cudn't start at time and it could not have been made a regular course. It started at time when one mid semester exams were already over. (The course finally started on 28th Jan). So the course was clearly made a Non-Academic course taken by student only for interest as there won't be any mention of same in the gradesheet.
Dean based to his experience asked me to have a commitment fees from student so that they take it only if they are interested. We decided over an agreement which helped in getting approx 40% payment from students and rest by the institute (this was b'coz the course was not part of curriculum, thanks to Dean we were not required to pay all the money ourselves)
The course finally started with around 30 students paying fees on time and others asking to enter when the faculty finally started taking the classes. Since languages courses can´t have more than 30-35 student in one batch. I had to stop allowing ppl from registering for the course. What happened during the course left me amazed. Slowly students started bunking the classes. The number of student coming regularly was getting lower in every class. By the end of Feb the strength would have easily come down to 15-20, after Feb the attendence decrease was even more shocking. In the last few classes we had attendence like 5-4-3 and so on.
I was seriously shocked to see such a decline in interest of students over time. I can't help but conclude that attendence rule and grades are must to have the students come to class. Even things like Language courses which is totally started on basis of interested student and not a compulsion cannot maintain the strength over time then compulsory courses will surely have lots of problems in doing the same. Committment fees didn't seem to work out well either. May be its just my way of thinking….
(More about French Learning in later posts)
How IIIT is different
Dr. Abhijeet Mitra's speech during the Farewell, expressed something that has been in my mind for quite some time but never came on this blog. Its is in regards to How IIIT is a different institute. There have been some opposing thoughts shared by many ppl so I take the opportunity to clear some confussions.
His speech started with very basic thought that if anyone things makes lot of sense, I can't quote it totally but here is the gist : IIIT is not trying to be like any particular college in the country, We are trying to have something different here which has not been tried by anyone in the country. We are doing it in a kind of learning and doing mode rather than emulating some other college. IIIT is going to be brand in itself. (OT: During our Open House representative from a college in Delhi informed that they take IIIT Hyderbad as the role model for their new institute).
In his speech he didn't emphasize specifically the difference IIIT means in terms of education. I should try to add it from my point of view. IIIT's faculty are very determined to make the institute a leading research institute and fulfill the growing needs of researchers in the country, which other colleges have been ignoring all this while, which includes the IITs across the country.
Yesterday evening while talking to Dr. PJN we learnt that making a research institute is our institutes' goal but it does require lot of prework. It does require a solid UG course and curriculum so that the undergrads are ready for taking up research or even any other high end work in the industry. UG is also the right time to get the student interested in to research. This is why institute boast of research at UG level.
Isn't it very true that most of the students who do their UG studies in other good colleges do not get motivated for higher studies (whether within the college or outside). This is different from ppl who do their UG in not so good colleges(as in quality of education, infrastructure) who are kinda forced to do PG to get the good university brand name in their resumé. This includes ppl with big funds who go abroad joining any university (even rank > 100). Most ppl I knew in my town used to write GATE for the sole reason of either coming in to the CS field from some other field or getting a PG from IIT so they can get a good job. This is just a generalization. In exception there must be many truly motivated ppl who do PG in IIT too, infact I have met quite a few of such ppl in recent past (at ACCV and soon). Isn't it strange that almost no one takes a MTech or MS in IIT after doing a B.Tech there (unless ofcourse they are in dual degree from the beginning).
When I joined IIIT, I had no idea that I would be doing my Master's here. Not even that I wud be doing Honours. It just so happens that the curriculum gets you interested in to higher studies. I am now very positive about coming back and doing a Ph.D after 2-3 years of industry experience. Yesterday Sharat kumar from BTech 2k2 batch shared similar experience over his PhD admissions in to top notch colleges. "Sir (prof PJN), I never though in my second year that I would even consider doing a Ph.D …". So is the situation of many ppl who are doing MS in India or abroad.
The important factor here is that the MS or PhD is not motivated by monitory benefits. After going through such highly motivating and interesting courses. You are tempted to try higher education instead of taking up a job very early. Sharath also shared how the flexibility in coming out of dual degree programme and going abroad for higher education helps ppl. Prof PJN remarked that flexibility is to ensure that students interested in higher education can remain motivated in that rather than getting distracted by the whole placement/campus bussiness, …"by taking entering in to dual degree programme students are commiting to higher education not to higher education in IIIT"
When it comes to jobs, many ppl get it wrong that our college doesn't care about them. It is understood by faculty that everone has his own goals and needs. According to Prof PJN, Firstly monitory needs might require you to join a Job and secondly a proper Job which you like instead of research may be the right thing to do for you. In the first case you can anytime come back for higher education if that interests you., or you can take up part time courses like MS and PhD and in second case you can use your excellent skill to shine in the industry. (As a matter of fact many of my friends in jobs are comtemplating higher education).
Sorry for the huge post 
R&D showcase 2006 at IIIT Hyderabad
Will try to summarise the R&D showcase06 in some details with some photographs
Well Mr. Ramdurai was not able to visit IIIT on 3rd march as chief guest because of Bush(disrespect intended). The talk was therefore not possible. ultimately a panel discussion was held on the topic “Challenges in IT research for India”. The discussion is worth a separate post. Key point, we need more institutes like IIIT and we need to tap more and more research oriented/enthusiast students rather than spoil their tallent in other activities We need more research!
This time extra importance was given to Industry participation but results were not encouraging. The times when only invitees were supposed to visit labs mostly no one came. We had participation from GE and I just now heard from my friend their that GE ppl are really impressed with the institute, professors and the students. Great!
On the other hand students participation was great. Many juniors came and saw the demo, some inquired some technical details too. Prof Kamal suggested students to enquire activities in the labs before taking Honours, which I guess is a great idea. I was excited by seeing the R&D demos by my seniors in past years.
(I specially remember the demo of flag simulation by Kopos, which made me very interested in graphics )
Though ppl are generally excited by seeing most of the demos, Robotics lab, CVIT, CDE lab demos seem to draw lot of crowd. This time we had some real robots moving in the robotics demos ppl were excited to see them. If I am not wrong the electronics demos were also mixed with Robotics lab, some of them were interesting too (like the robot neighbour detection using IRids). In CDE lab the multiagents demos with graphical output get most attention. CVIT lab is all about graphical and visually appealing output. This time Nirnimesh demonstrated his display wall project on a 3×4 array of comps photos attached. Many satellite imaging, OCR related and Medical processing projects were shown along with many of image and Video processing ones.
The display wall which was one of the highlights this time. We already have clusters building up at IIIT !!! Who’s says we aren’t good at hardware ?
Some photographs clicked at random times, showing great deal of excitement and participation at R&D:
Me and vakiba explaining our work
My camera remained mostly in our room only so photos cover very small part of R&D. I will upload more photos as they are available.
Talk by Atanu dey at felicity
I can’t possibly even summarize the great talk in my own words. Those at IIIT can see the video recording of the same which shud be available soon through Felicity organizers. A small introduction to the speaker is that he is the author of one of the most popular blog in the country http://www.deeshaa.org. Here is my attempt to summarize it in brief. Since it was a very general talk its difficult to emphasize every point.
Surplus of information: Example of how dietrician industry(?) has come up so successful with the availabilit y of surplus of food, by logic their will soon be a need of ppl who can provide ways to summarize the huge amounts of information. How nicely our sense and brain filter the use amount of data available to us and filter and store it so efficiently.
Monkey Fish Example: “The monkey wanted to save the fish from drowning so it kept the fish on top of a tree”, telling the current state of our leaders (monkeys) who are claiming to be saving us (fishes) from drowning.
Importance of Increasing production power in the country
Rival good/Non Rival good: The difference between food vs information. Some one accessing some information doesn’t effects others chances of accessing the information. Also talked about public good and private good.
Marginal Cost of Duplication of Information
Difference between knowledge and information: Knowing is the summary of information received by a human being, analysed and stored in the brain, its a private good.
Increasing Production vs increasing employment: The former one being more important.
Ability to adopt innovation Vs Information for Development: Explained it with the example that its important for end users like farmers to adopt the technology rather than knowing the science behind it in the first place. Once wheelbarrow was invented it was not supposed to be re-invented by each and every person who needed to use it. They can simply use it. Cost of innovation is high and that should not prohibit us from using the latest up2date technologies and growing at the equal pace as others in the world do.
Removing illiteracy: this one was a very interesting. Why could over government never actually tackle the illiteracty problem. How and why they should actually do it now. “A illiterate’s children could be literate by a literate’s children will never be illiterate” that explains how easy it is to get rid of the literacy if the government indulges in a proper investment at once rather than a slow/partial polity over 50 years which has failed. How goverment spends around 4000/- Rs per year for a child’s literacy in the country and what if the government kept an offer to private sector to literate the children at say Rs 20000/- per child for all the 100 Million ppl in the country.Some discussion went on for command and control vs property rights, but I was not able to get all of it.
-
Recent Comments
saumendra on Learning French Rumeet on The 2nd CVIT Party Héric on Learning French glaudson on French Course experience vardhman on Video Encoding from frames in… -
Flickr Photos
More Photos
