Seven Years

It has been Seven Years since joined my first company on May 31st 2000 in Bangalore. Life was just like a Sine Wave , seen many ups and downs. The first two companies getting closed down and the third company the project got closed down and worked on some very good projects in the present company since then.

Life is a Journey, you met people,make friendship, travel with them, as the road diverges, each goes in their own path , But the Journey Continues...!

PodWorks

PodWorks is a workshop style un conference, first of its kind in India for Pod Casting. It is a initiative from The Knowledge Foundation, which has (un)organized successful events in the past like WikiCamp.

PodWorks is scheduled on 9th and 10th of June 2007 at Tidel Park. The Registrations for event is open and there is a door donation fee of Rs200. Wide range of topics is planned to be covered at the event ranging from what is podcast to how to make money from podcasting, the event is going to be very useful one.

I am disappointed, as I will be missing the event and all the learning experience, since I will be on a travel on those days :-( , hoping to catch some of the learning's through the blogs and other materials after the event. But nothing will be come closer to the actual experience.

So those who are interested, go register soon.

Blood Donation

Yesterday there was a blood donation camp at my office. I donated blood after a long time, (Aug 2005).It is always a satisfying experience after donating blood, that some life will be saved because of the blood that you donated

Thinking back, when and where I heard about blood donation, It was my father who was travelling to another town to donate blood for a friend, told me something about it,but never knew completely what it was all about since I was very young then. I heard seriously about Blood Donation, ironically from a Comedy Drama of Sve Shekar, where in which he is organizing for a blood donation camp, but unable to convince his wife and father-in-law to donate blood, in the end father-in-law gets injured and saved by blood donated by some one else. In the drama, he said some one (if I remember correctly it is Bangalore ramani amma) has donated about 52 times in her life time. If every one donated blood at least once in their life time, there will be no shortage of blood in any hospital. A strong and valid point.

Later in my college life, Chemistry Professor Rajaram, involved us in various social activities like NSS camp in some villages where in which blood donation was one of the critical part, which made me to take a decision to donate blood at least once in my life time. A opportunity came at my final year of college, a blood donation camp was organized in the college.It was a very healthy competition in the college to give blood donation more than 200 students gave blood and I was one of them. I always had a fear that since I am lean, I might be rejected for donating blood. But nothing like that happened.

My subsequent blood donations happened during my six years in Bangalore all them organized through the community clubs of the various companies I worked. I always try to persuade people, to donate blood, but to my surprise, most people including very educated people have misconceptions about blood donation. I was also shocked when one of my ex-colleague (who is a MBA graduate) told that one should not give blood, you will become weak , get disease because of blood donation. I have never seen any other blood donation camp which was similar to the college blood donation camp, cheering and queueing up for blood donation.

Check out this post from Jump on Blood Banks.


A few points from my personal experience

People from the age of 18 to 50 (sometimes 55) weighing more than 46 Kg can donate blood.

A doctor, check and enquires, before permitting you to donate blood.

By Donating blood, you are not going to loose any thing. You might face some dizziness, but you could just avoid it by drinking extra water (You don't even need refreshments, I have tested this twice in blood donation camps by not taking any refreshments!!)

Just continue doing your daily routine, nothing will happen. (Unless your work involves lot of physical activity)

Preferably donate blood one hour after food and take the next food after two of blood donation.But don't skip any meals. Drink lot of water.

Mobile Monday on a Sunday

Attended the MoMoS (short form for Mobile Monday on a Sunday) at IIT today. (Going first time to an IIT - Campus, more about it separate post later on). It was first of its kind in Chennai. Got confused with the huge IIT campus and were trying to locate CSD block, the venue for the event for nearly 45 minutes.

The event was planned to start to around 10:00 AM, but was about 20 minutes late, since most of the participants had similar issue of finding the location.The event had four speakers, who were speaking about various topic on the Mobile Technology.

The First Session was by Asif Ali from Mobile-Work . He covered how the Ads in mobile will be significant market in the near future. Very interactive and interesting session. Ads on mobile will not replace mass media, but with just a market share of about 5% for mobile may do good for Subscribers, operators, aggregators, developers.

The Second session was by Anand Kannan of Wizdom His session was about how by GPRS connection mobile phone could be a used as a learning tool.Wizdom has done learning tutorial for GRE. Though the concept is innovative, I fail to get complete picture, why some one would try to learn through small mobile phone screen, and also a slow GPRS connection.Though Anand told that it would be very useful for students who waste around 2-3 Hrs a day in travelling and will be useful for them.

The Third Session was by Atul Chitnis of Geodesic His session was about the people, expectations and problems in the mobile technology. It was interesting and good learning.There was also a demo of the Mundu IM client.

The Fourth session was by Navjot Pawera of Opera It discussed about standardization and customization of websites for Universal access of website to access from any websites. There was also a demo of Opera Mini web browser for mobile devices. There was lot of web application technical terms, It was difficult for me to get the session completely.

After the four sessions, there was a good lunch arranged at the IIT Campus Tifanys. I liked the sessions and enjoyed them, but a few of participants felt disappointed as the event didn't meet their expectations. The one missed part in the event is the networking of people, there was no time in the start or end for the networking of people.

First ever IT guy

Got this from the Technet blog site. A interesting and humorous one.



Tail Piece: Note the interesting fact, that Technet(Microsoft) referring something from You Tube(google).

A Special Day

Blogging after quite a while. So much of work, a official travel to Bangalore happened in the last two weeks. Many experience to blog, but yet no time.

But today (May 3rd) is a Special Day in my life. It was the last day in my college life , we wrote our final exam and had a final party at tambaram vasantha bhavan. Seven long years have passed since then. But still, this day is fresh on the memory. I may not wish to be in the college again, but wish the memories of my college life is there with me the rest of my life.