Monthly Archives: October 2009

Drupal Sprint in Pune this weekend

Drupal in India by Prasad Shirgaonkar

Drupal in India by Prasad Shirgaonkar

Drupal seems to be picking up momentum among Indian developers and students this year. Reflecting this new-found interest is the upcoming Drupal Sprint on October 30th and 31st in Pune. The sprint is taking place at the Bhaskaracharya Pratishthana (BP) campus on Law College Road and is being organized by Pune Linux Users Group (PLUG) enthusiasts and BP.

At this cosy and focused FOSS gathering, you can participate in a sprint to fix bugs, write documentation, develop Drupal modules as well as learn about migrating from Drupal 6 to the latest Drupal 7. And if you’re not into developing code or documentation, you can learn about how Drupal is being used in websites, blogs and online magazines by attending talks and workshops which occur in parallel.

After organizing PLUGMASH a couple of years ago, I’m glad to see the PLUG organizing this event. It would be impossible to pull off this sprint without Vivek Khurana, Manjusha Joshi, Sudhanwa Jogalekar and all the folks volunteering their time to share their passion for Drupal.

Registration is free for this sprint. So all you need is time and of course an interest in building beautiful websites. If you’re in the Mumbai-Pune area, do stop by and participate. I’d love to hear from you about the event, so send me your feedback :-)

Open Source Bloggers in Datamation 2009 Top 200 Tech Blogs

Datamation’s 2009 Top 200 Tech Blogs list the following folks in the Linux / Free and Open Source category:

Starting at rank 155…
155 – Matt Asay: The Open Road
156 – SourceForge Community Blog
157 – Linux Today Blog
158 – Mark Shuttleworth’s Blog
159 – Aaron Seigo
160 – Stormy’s Corner: Stormy Peters
161 – Miquel de Icaza’s Web Log
162 – Jim Zemlin
163 – Free Software Foundation
164 – Linux.com’s Featured Blogs
165 – The Linux Blog
166 – Groklaw
167 – Sexy Sexy Penguins
168 – Ken Hess’s Linux Blog

Even Linus didn’t make it to this list. I think this list needs some new faces. There are many other personalities in the tech world who could be considered for their knowledge and expert opinions on trends and technologies from growing markets in Asia, South America and Africa. But that would be another list :-)

Thought provoking…

A couple of thought provoking links…

India’s Malnutrition Dilemma, The New York Times, October 11, 2009

“But there is a ghost at the party, and its name is malnutrition. India is often compared — and often compares itself — with China, but the fact is that as China became an economic powerhouse it greatly reduced malnutrition. In an all-fronts effort, China cut child malnutrition by two-thirds between 1990 and 2002. Today only 7 percent of Chinese children under age 5 are underweight, whereas the figure for India is 43 percent. Even in sub-Saharan Africa, which most people assume to have the direst poverty statistics, the average child-malnutrition rate is 28 percent.”

Nepotism in Indian Politics, The New York Times, October 12, 2009

“Across India, political families are entrenched at every level of government and politics. At least nine of the 32 members of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s cabinet either descended from political families or have children seeking or holding office. Parliament is littered with political families; a recent study found that 31 of the 58 women elected had a husband, brother, father or father-in-law in politics.”

Bloggers, Paid Reviews and the FTC

Bloggers and the FTC

Bloggers and the FTC

Sometimes it is hard to distinguish between a genuine user experience and a paid advertisement when reading product reviews on the Net. Often, there is no clear way to indicate to a reader whether the review is paid-for or is independent. I think blog posts could use a set of standardized symbols to indicate endorsed content. For example, the Creative Commons could develop a list of symbols for open content to indicate symbols for independent opinion, paid-for endorsements, testimonials, advertisements, etc.

Today, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has issued updated guidelines governing the use of endorsements and testimonials in advertising. The guidelines now clearly state that “the post of a blogger who receives cash or in-kind payment to review a product is considered an endorsement. Thus, bloggers who make an endorsement must disclose the material connections they share with the seller of the product or service.” These guidelines are effective as of December 1, 2009 and fines for not declaring conflicts of interest range up to $11,000 for a violation.

Hopefully, the new FTC guidelines will make online blogging a little more transparent. They will certainly spur bloggers to be more conscientious and open about their financial relationships. Disclosure will make it easier for a reader or consumer to avoid false or misleading claims and to find the best reviews for their needs.

Letting Students Blog: Why India’s universities need student blogs

Education in India

Education in India

India has tens of well known, reputable universities – Indian Institute of Technology (IITs), Indian Institute of Management (IIMs), and medical colleges including AFMC and AIIMS. Tens of thousands of students from all over Asia, Africa and the Middle East, as well as from within India itself, apply to these institutions every year. The current admissions process is highly competitive and dryly mechanical.

Leading global universities are exploring alternative approaches. For example, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) now allows students to blog without censorship on the university admissions website. Many other top universities like Amherst, Haverford, Vassar, Wellesley, Yale have also chosen to integrate student blogs into their official university websites.

MIT’s admissions office thinks blogging has helped humanize the process of applying to the university. It has helped students select one school over the other based on the community they feel most comfortable with. Prospective students read about shared interests, hobbies, life on campus and summer activities blogged by students already at the university.

Many of India’s universities can easily adopt the same strategy to attract top students that best fit the curricula and environments they have to offer. Integrating student experiences into their websites through student blogs is a great way to build a more healthy student community as well as to bind together the larger alumni community. Blogging can add new energy to an obsolete dog-eat-dog process of college matriculation in India.

Red Hat organizes Professors’ Open Source Camp in Singapore

POSSE

POSSE

Professors’ Open Source Summer Experience (POSSE), a training bootcamp targeted for faculty members of technical universities in Asia is being organized from November 9-13, 2009 at Nanyang Polytechnic in Singapore. Faculty members from Singapore, Malaysia, China, India are expected to participate.

The first camp was held in Raleigh, North Carolina earlier this year in July.

The goals for the camp are ambitious. A cross-section of topics focusing on development tools and techniques aims to recruit new contributors to open source projects by providing a hands-on experience to participants using Fedora as project examples.

The 5-day camp starts with an overview of open source, then dives into communication tools such as IRC, wikis and blogs to teach participants how to be effective contributors. Development topics include compiling source code, using build tools, setting up a build environment and packaging with RPM.

Testing and bug fixing are easy routes for users to become contributors. Participants walk-through the process of filing bug reports with Bugzilla as well as editing, testing and creating bug patches.

The camp is being organized by Harish Pillay, Jasmine Ee, and Alan Ho from Red Hat Singapore. Mel Chua and Greg DeKoenigsberg are mentors for the program. You can find out more about POSSE Singapore at its website.

I think this program is an excellent start in the right direction by Red Hat and its Asia Pacific (APAC) team to facilitate open source education. Engaging faculty from engineering universities is key to increasing contributions as well as growing the talent pool of engineers in emerging markets to support industry demand.