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Enjoying PodWorks.in (Day 2 10-JUN-07)

Day 2 of Podworks.in was really exciting and much more fun filled than Day 1. As Day 1 helped to shatter the virtual wall between every participant and now all the participants started freely interacting with each other.

On previous night (Saturday night) I stayed in Beach house along with participants and had a great time there. On Sunday we headed towards Tidel Park. John of Esha yoga joined with me in my car on our way from ECR to Tidel Park. Just a few words about John, he is US citizen and he got inspired by Indian yoga and Indian philosophy and came to India on 2003. He is part of Esha yoga for past four years and now he is master in Yoga. We shared our views about Indian Yoga and so on.


Event started at 10'0 clock and first session was from Sridhar Ranganathan an Product development Manager with Yahoo India. He gave presentation titled "Discovery Channel". It totally revolved around concept of "How to get your Blogs discovered by search engines". He made detail presentation and it should be really helpful for Bloggers to increase the eye ball count to their site. He provided how we can make search engine to search our blogs easily and push up our stand in the ranking and so on. He went on explaining importance of Blog rolls, Tagging, Bookmarking, Commenting of other blogs and linking back to your site. His detail presentation is posted in his blog. From my view his presentation was fantastic.

Sridhar Ranganathan presenting Discovery Channel

Next Dinesh from Indiainteracts presented how do to edit videos by using Adobe Premiere. Presentation was fantastic and he really showed how fluent he is with Adobe suite. He displayed his skills and answered the doubts from audience. He explained how easy it is to convert Video from Handy cam to computer with couple of additional hardware and software for little extra rupees. Overall it was very good presentation and very useful for the guys who are planing to do Video Podcast.

Oops I dint get Dinesh snaps on presentation so not able to put his presenation snaps

Then we had a presentation from Vivin Mathew of CNN-IBN, his topic related to 'how to make interesting podcast', as he is from TV reporter background he explained things related to editing the lengthy videos without stripping its core content. It was interesting to hear presentation from Journalist. As usual there were lot of question from audience and he answered to it.

Vivin Mathew of CNN-IBN during his presentation

Then Comes the presentation from film cameraman Shashi Kumar. I guess he was pulled in by Chinmayi for the presentation. His presentation was awesome. As he was much fluent and comfortable in Tamil, so he made his presentation in Tamil. Vijay who was compering the show translated for the non-Tamil audience. He gave fantastic presentation, he used very very simply and down to earth technique to explain about aperture,wide-angle view and optimum values to set for the above during shooting of Video. He did explained about usage of Lights during video capturing. It was really eye-opener to me. I came to know lot of things related to usage of lights during presentation. He presented his show with great energy and he kept the audience in whole happy and laughter mood through out his show. It proved too be informative also.

Shashi Kumar from film industry during his presentaion

As it was already 12:30 PM and I can already feel the hungry and was waiting for lunch. As lot of presentation still lined up, lunch was postponed for another 30 mins.

Now Yousuf from Sun MicroSystem presented it. His topic revolved around 'Hardware and software system required at server side to support Video streaming' It was mostly related to technical. As it was technical and I mostly luved and it was much interesting to me when explained about the require RAM configuration and servers (blade, clustering) and so on. I got exposed to lot technical details related to Video streaming at server end. Worth a good presentation for techies.

Yousuf during his presentation

We moved out for lunch and after quick lunch we had violin concert from Krish Ashok for 15 mins. It was really good show and every body listened and enjoyed the music.

Krish Ashok during his Veena concert

We had a session from Eric Miller. This totally revolved around the concept of Video conferencing. It was really fantastic to see the latest happening in Video conferencing field and to see how the technology is making video conferencing so simple and easy. In addition it is really interesting to see how video conferencing is making our life easier and connecting the world separated from 1000 of miles apart. It is really a great technology and each progress in Video conferencing technology is going to improve the communication of human being and break the distance barrier to a great extent.

Eric Miller presenting on VideoConference

Sharanya a college student studying Journalism and currently who is intern at CNN-IBN made a presentation. Her presentation was related to "Correct body language which should be maintained during interview". This presentation was definitely useful for Video podcast guys. I was really taken away by her fluency in English and easiness in presenting the topic. She started with Damshar-art (expressing the film names by just acting). Right from starting of the show audience got attracted to her show, then went on explaining about how to maintain Body language during interview. She used mock interview between her Friend and Eric Miller. They on their part made presentation very well by exhibiting proper acting. Overall her presentation kept the audience in great mood and fun thrilled one.

Sharanya during her presentation

Shanmugam from Satyam presented the show related to usage of podcast in E-Learning. Few guys who are working in L & D (Learning & Development) domain got curious and exchanged their views about the usage of podcast in Learning field. He explained how we can use podcast both audio and video in organization for Learning purpose.

He gave one more presentation related to Flash files (FLV).

Shanmugam during his presentation

Before wrapping of the day we had a presentation for Sunil Nayar and Vikram of Nautanki.tv .

After his presentation show came to an end. All the person gathered to have group photo and few people started leaving the hall. But many audience who were there helped the organizer in cleaning of the Hall. I can really see total commitment from audience in helping the organizer to clean up the hall by packing the beds, dis-assembling tables and loading it in Van and more. As we followed Un-coference format so totally audience played the duty of organizer also.

At end of the day it was really fantastic to see the spirits in each and every audience in this workshop. I am definitely sure this workshop was success full one and served many purpose like:

• Bringing awareness to podcast


• Encouraging the people to do podcast


• Breaking major myth - doing podcast require high end audio equipment and its for tech only


• It played as major event to increase your professional and social network.
  

Definitely I am sure people who attended this event will be looking for another forthcoming feature events from TKF.

Just few notes of acknowledgements :

• I took the timeline of the show from Chinmayi Blog


• I took the snaps from Flickr uploaded by DreamChaser

Ilan (myself) clarfying doubts :)

Enjoying PodWorks (Day1, 09-JUN-07)

In this blog I want to share my experience at Podworks (happened in Tidel park on 09-Jun-07 to 11-JUN-07). I don't know people has patient to read this big crap.., but just want to express my feeling.

As most of the software professionals, I do spent most of the weekend with my family just helping my other half with house administration work and so on. Usually weekends are quiet and dedicated to rest, but last weekend was really fantastic and was with full of activities : fun, knowledge sharing and social networking and much more.

Last week I attended Podworks in Tidel Park Chennai, It was totally fantastic and enjoyable right from starting of the event(8:45 AM Saturday) to End (6:00 PM Sunday). As like all other people I really loved and learn t more.. I just had first taste of Unconference style conference. Organizer TKF (The Knowledge Foundation) Chennai has organized the event excellently. Fully credit to the organizer exceptionally Syed and Kiruba.

I really understand the power of Unconference style Conference in this event, when I started for this event I dint know any of the 200+ attendees neither meet them or talked with them or emailed them. But after two days I just got interacted, shared my experience and learned lot with lot of participants. UnConference style proved one of the best event for networking.

Ok, now let us sink into the event. Event started with Kiruba's welcoming speech. In that he described about the pathetic condition of Podcast in Indian scenario (only less people has embraced this technology to express it when comparable to other country). Then participants went on to pour their views related to hindrance "Why People don't Podcast". This discussion went on for more than a hour. By nature of the issues raised by audience, we can observe how diversified issues are, the issue ranging from technical to non-technical and our own myths and so on.

Kiruba of TKF introduction speech

Based on the issues raised by audience, topics(in addition to previously scheduled topics) for the next two days where defined and attendees took the ownership to provide presentation to address these topics. This is one of the best part of UnConference style, where real issues faced by the attendees are taken and addressing it on the fly.

After this we had tea break and I moved to the Press conference organized by TKF. It was quite interesting and this is my first experience of press conference. It is really interesting to witness and interact with media persons. It went on for a 30 mins.

TKF guys answering press persons

In this conference few journalist attended it and they mentioned their views about blogging and podcasting. More over on next day (Sunday) Vivin Mathew of CNN-IBN channel made presentation

In this conference, lot of people from all the walks of life attended it. I was really surprised to see famous young energetic Tamil singer, RJ and TV compeer (we can see her energy in 'Vijay TV Airtel Super singer and it is junior version) Chinmayi Sripada in this conference. As this conference is related to Internet technology, I expected that she would be a just simply a silent spectator and attend the conference and be passive, but to my surprise she was one of the active blogger in the conference. She blogged live with her Apple i Mac laptop and picturing the conference with latest high end Nikon digital camera and uploading the picture in web. It is really great and surprise to see a film personally using laptop very easily, blogging and keeping update with latest Web 2.0 technologies and so on. More surprise is, she maintains her blog (more than three blog - one for just scribbling and one for photo and other one related to her songs and so on) and she updates her blog quite often.

Chinmayi with Imac

It is one of my dream to buy the I mac and Nikon (even though I don't know to use manual zoom camera) laptop and when we inquired about the price she mentioned it is more than 1.5lk+ for I mac and 75k for Nikon, I just moved to other topic after she mentioned the price :)

SIFY one of the sponsor, has made the Hall WI-Fi enabled it. As a result all the attendees with laptop where live and they got connected to Internet and where blogging lively. It was really fantastic to see many people spreading the message immediately. I dint have neither my laptop nor my digicam so dint get opportunity to blog lively or shot any picture. '

An MBA student Karthik Kanan presented his show related to "How to make Audio podcast online". I was at Press meeting so dint get chance to view his complete presentation. He mentioned that we can easily record audio online and embed this link in Wordpress and Blogger blogs. It was interesting and was surprised to see how easy to record online and provide links in our blogs.

Then we moved for lunch. Lunch session served many purpose in addition to serving lunch for stomach it proved to be good ice-breaker session. Many people introduced with each other and went on talking and sharing their ideas and knowing each other. Sponsor did a good job in lunch.

After lunch it was Chinmayi's turn.

Singer Chinmayi went on to present a topic related to handling of Mike (not a person named mike it is acoustic mike) during a show. It was nice and people who are using mike for podcast can use the tips which she mentioned. She explained about the environment in RJ cockpit and audience where very curious about the position of mike in RJ cockpit and other minute details related to her RJ role and shooted few question related to it. She answered audience very well. It looks she was very passionate about her work.

Chinmayi speech

Sridhar Rao, Vibash and Himanshu came from Bangalore to present their topic. Their topic is related to 'Tips on Blogging in Wordpress". They went on explaining about Wordpress feature and how to embed the sound and video file both in Wordpress and Blogger. I came to know that it is not possible to post JS related URL or commands in Wordpress blog. They showed demo to include youtube videos in Blog sites. Those guys explained patiently about blogging right from creating account to blogging. Due to shortage of time they wrapped their presentation quickly but they presented more than what one can do at short span of time. This guys really proved to passionate and energetic with presentation.

Himanshu,Vibash and Sridhar Rao

As beds spread in front of the stage (actually there was not stage at all), we can see after post-lunch session many people occupied the bed. Indeed when I tried to occupy the bed and I found it was houseful at that time. This is power of LUNCH :)

Power of Lunch

Sunil Nair CEO of Nautanki.tv (one of the sponsor of the event) presented his topic. His topic revolved around how to make MONEY thru blog and in content generation(not confined to blogs, some thing related to online TV). He went on explaining how a user creating content for his TV can generate revenue. He indeed showed couple of example of content provider earning good handsome money and few netizens with camcorder started professionally creating the shows for his TV based on the simple topic (mainly related to cooking, Religion and so on). Revenue is shared with them based on the number of audience viewing the show.

Sunil Nair of Nautanki.tv

It looks there are instance where viewer used to mail nautanki.tv when shows by few content provider gets delayed. It is really surprise for me to see the die hard audience for Internet TV show.

Probably there might be great potential for online TV in coming days ahead

Venkatesh Chandrasekaran of 'Schools For India' ( a NGO aims at constructing 6000 schools by the year 2020 across the country) gave his presentation. He serves as senior R & D manager in one of the top IT company. He explained idea behind SchoolForIndia foundation and requested all the enthusiastic participants to extend their help in providing the content (either audio or video podcast related to education) to SFI foundation. He has clear cut plan about how to distribute the content to the rural schools. I can really see lot of participant carried away by his social work and after end of the show many participant where interacting with him and enquiring about how they can help. I am pretty sure at lest few of the participant will definitely lend their hands. Hats of to Venkatesh and his foundation and his effort to his social cause...

Venkatesh Chandrasekaran of SchoolForIndia

Dhempe talked about the usage of podcast in corporate environment he went explaining about their company experience in using podcast inside their concern.

After this, show came to pause, first day of the event came to an end. And participant started talking with each other. Most of the enthusiast participant who wish to keep the spirits, where started heading the Beach house. Van was arranged from Tidel to Beach house and in addition to Van I can see more than 10 cars parked near Beach house. We had excellent dinner in Beach house and live music band and every one there had a fantastic time either with live band or swimming pool or both or in some other way. I can see most people where interacting with each other until early morning 2:30 AM.

Few snaps from Podworks.in

Trying to use Tamil in Web

One of the easiest thing which we can follow to type Tamil in our desktop is just download the suitable Tamil fonts (preferably UNICODE fonts), install and start using it. By following this approach we can easily type TAMIL alphabets in standard editor like MS Word and Notepad and so on. But the issue(at lest for me) comes only if we want to type the TAMIL font in Web, say if we want to use TAMIL for searching in Internet, Blogs and so on.

Even if we install Tamil fonts in our machine it is not very easy to type Tamil fonts in Web. One of the easy solution to type Tamil in web and even in standard desktop application like MS Word and Notepad is to use eKalappai. Probably there may be lot of other solution available which I am not aware. I just stumbled on eKalappai and personally I fell this as easy one. And from the Tamil blogs which I read, I understand many people are using eKalappai for it.

For my Friend it was very easy and straightforward to install and start using eKalappai in fact he only suggested me to use it, but unluckily for me it was not easy and it took little time and effort to fix this issue and at last I was able to solve by using Google search.

But still I was having an issue, my Keyman Visual Keyboard layout not displaying Tamil fonts. Due to this it was very difficult for me to find the key combination to type Tamil fonts. As like all other computer freaks I was trying other temporary options to overcome this issue. At last I found some sort of solution which solves the problem. I was able to find layout of the "Tamil 99 (Phonetic )" keyboard. eKalappai Tamil99Uni keyboard follows this lay out.

The important problem which I encounter when using eKalappai is, this application hangs often and if I want to restart it and it forces me to first RESTART the system. This really pinches me a lot hope create of eKalappai might fix this issue in future.

I just want to share couple of links which I used to install it and solve the above mentioned issues :
eKalappai installable
Layout of Tamil Keyboard
Fix for Yahoo messenger - but personally I never tried this one.
Explains how to type Tamil text
Usage of Keyman keyboard issues with Windows XP professional and its fix

Happy Tamil Blogging :)

இணையதளத்தில் தமிழ் பக்கங்களை அதிகரிப்போம்

A - alpha b- bravo c - charlie (NATO Phonetic Alphabet)

When ever I talk in phone to any Help Desk agent and when I want to communicate my First and Last Name to them, I always have hard time in abbreviating for each and every alphabet in my name. In fact I use to remember some abbreviation, but still I was not happy with abbreviation. I was looking from some perfect abbreviation.

The reason why I was looking for some good abbreviation was due to the few funny stories which I heard regarding this... In an incident one person used abbreviation like D-Dog and L-Lion in a important meeting where more than 20 person where attending. Most of the attendees where taken by laugh when they heard this. In another incidence when agent on other line asked to caller to spell the caller name Raj an (Name has been changed :-) ). Raj an started by telling R for Raj an. This also happened during important meeting and all the attendees in meeting started to laugh. And in another incidence a guy abbreviated B - Bush and person in other end of the call was an hardcore Democrat and he got irritated when he heard the name Bush. This incident happened during American Election time :-)...

So I started to search in net for the alphabet abbreviation which are widely used and which sounds decently and which are neutral in nature. I latter found NATO Phonetic Alphabet which is used widely by Army men and other person to pronounce and transmit the voice message containing important words in Radio and telephone regardless of their native language, especially when the safety of navigation or persons is essential. The paramount reason is to ensure intelligibility of voice signals over radio links. regardless of their native language, especially when the safety of navigation or persons is essential.

This NATO phonetic abbreviation is widely used during communication thru phone and radio.
An alternative to this, "Western Union Phonetic Alphabet" is also used.

NATO Phonetic Alphabet

Letter	phonetic letter
A	Alpha
B	Bravo
C	Charlie
D	Delta
E	Echo
F	Foxtrot
G	Golf
H	Hotel
I	India
J	Juliet
K	Kilo
L	Lima
M	Mike
N	November
O	Oscar
P	Papa
Q	Quebec
R	Romeo
S	Sierra
T	Tango
U	Uniform
V	Victor
W	Whiskey
X	X-ray
Y	Yankee
Z	Zulu

Couple of links which talks in depth about NATO Phonetic abbreviations are

http://www.osric.com/chris/phonetic.html
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/radio/phonetic-alph/full/
http://montgomery.cas.muohio.edu/meyersde/kitchensink/alphabets/index.html

From here after I can be very comfortable when I abbreviate my Name to some caller on other line even in meeting attended by 100+ person.

Keeping Our Work Environment Clean and Organized

I was reading an article in USA Today (http://www.usatoday.com/money/2006-01-22-clean-desk-usat_x.htm) related to organized work environment. This article is simple but effective one.

I am definitely sure my work place is so chaos and more disorganized than my teammates. Oh probably this explains why I got very less pay hike in this appraisal :-).

This article and couple of article which I read today, definitely gave an insight and briefs advantage of keeping our work environment clean and organized. It is not keeping work place clean is important, but what is more important is that keeping work place clean and organized. By following this mantra we can ensure that we (at lest I) spent less time in searching documents.

One of the important and simple way to keep our work place clean and organized is to apply 5S principle. This is indeed more effective also. 5S is one of the Japanese concept for keeping our work environment clean and safety. This is basically applied in machine shop. Many of the big corporation (primarily in manufacturing industry) follow this simple technique to keep their machine shop clean and safe. In web we can see many testimonials from actual person who benefited by following this 5S technique. Good reading for 5s are wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5S) and quality training portal (http://www.qualitytrainingportal.com/resources/5S/index.htm). Definitely if we browse we will get lot of links for 5S related to learning.

OK coming back to our topic of Keeping Our Work Environment Clean. It is mandatory for us to keep our work place clean and organized by doing this definitely we gain lot of productivity in spending less time in retrieving document when needed. Not only gaining productivity we just avoid frustration of loosing some important documents.

Habit of keeping 'clean and organized' should not just stop in our work environment it should broadly applied to our wardrobe, mail-box and more. By following this it will definitely help us to be more effective and to achieve excellence in what we do.

Ready..Start...Go...

TIME magazine has selected YOU (off course we all) as the PERSON OF THE YEAR for 2006 ( http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,1101061225,00.html ). This reflects how every person from America to Japan and from Norway to South
Africa has contributed to the petabyte and petabyte ( or may be yottabyte and yottabyte) of information (perhaps precisely we should call as data instead of information) available in web.

This has really inspired me to contribute more information (or at lest data) to the web. As technologist this year I have decided to participate more in blogs, forum or wiki (if possible). I am thinking of blogging at lest four in a month at start and increase the frequency.

I really surprise when I read few of the blogs of great entrepreneurs or evangelist. I am really wondering how they organize the time.

OK. so now let us speak less and act more...