This is a post I am writing en route to Delhi. I was on Bangalore airport when I saw the new about blast in Delhi High Court. Was I shocked…No. I am neither surprised nor shocked. Why should I be shocked, it’s almost a monthly routine now. Delhi, Mumbai, Ahmadabad, Hyderabad or any big city, which has too many humans and good business, it would have had blast sometime in past 2 years.

I was not shocked, that does not mean I wasn’t sad, I was very sad. More sad on the part that what is happening in the country. Why are we not able to curb this terrorism, which is causing us so much damage? It’s not a new thing for our country to face, we have been facing this for last 20 years at least, so we should be prepared for such things and how to handle them.

What currently happens after a blast is as follows. One team starts investigating, other team overtakes it, our politicians start condemning the attacks, then police (or similar agency) puts in a lot of effort and catches few people, then they are stuck in judicial system awaiting punishment, media finds something new to talk about, people forget, politicians forget and somewhere we have another blast. The cycle goes on.

Why do we do all the actions afterwards? Yes, there is another set of opinion – you don’t know how many attacks our intelligence has saved. I agree with them, that is a fantastic job, but not enough. Not enough considering this has been going on for two decades now. We have too many people in our country does not mean value per life has reduced, its same everywhere in world.

Then there are politicians. Like today Home Minister said –“It was not intelligence failure, we didn’t have intelligence”. Then someone from opposition party said –“no intelligence is intelligence failure only”.  I agree nice play of words, but that does not solve the problem. You can condemn attacks, walk out of parliament or do some other political drama but that does not solve the problem. Even Pakistan condemned the attacks, what does that mean, nothing.

And what is happening with the people we are catching? Why are they not getting proper punishment on time. Why is Kasab still is jail and has not been given what he deserves. We have videos of his shooting during Mumai blasts, what more proof do we want to punish him. It’s been two years and he is still in jail and we are spending money on his. Keeping him in there long will again create situation as we had today. Some organization will attack some place and threaten to do the same if we don’t release him. Some other organization might hijack a plane and get him released. Why not punish the guilty and show others that if you choose same path what will be the final destination.

That brings me to the point, why am I writing this blog post? I don’t know why I am writing this. I wrote a post ‘Impact of Blogging’ after Ahmadabad serial blasts, trying to prove that blogging does not do anything to solve the problem. It is my form of “condemning” the attacks. I am kind of helpless here. I don’t know what to do, what can we do to solve this problem. This is just a way for me to vent out my anger.

This is not a full video of the show, I have edited the parts which contains storyline and some spoilers. This is not just a stunt show but an extremely hilarious show as well.

There are few things in life that we keep in our bucket list and few things that we have not thought about in our wildest dreams, scuba diving was part of that list. When I first heard that our group would be diving, my reaction was I will stay away from this one. But there were two positive things – first presence of Scott, who is an expert on scuba diving and has done it countless times, have instructed and taken many people for scuba dive for years and has dived to a depth of 200 feet. With his roaring confidence, expert skills and assurance that you don’t even have to know swimming to dive helped me decide. I obviously used twitter for suggestions and many people reassured me of the fun adventure it would be. Second thing that helped me was that I was not the only one with zero experience. That factor helps you decide that learning something new would be fun. And being in Key Largo, the diving capital of world and not to dive would be sort of blasphemy.

We were a group of eight people – one expert diver, two people with diving experience and  four of us with first try. We did our first practice in a pool, but parameters of equation had changed completely as we had thought of. It was getting dark so we had  less pool time, unusual to Florida weather it was extremely cold, and seeing all the gear with different gauges to monitor and learn everything in short time seemed impossible. I had been bugging Drew with a zillion question, he has taken the diving course and was ready with all the answers. Scott and him had been giving me very good answers, but when it comes to practical I trust experts only. Even though theoretically things work, in practice things are different. But there was no harm to jump in the pool, so we had out wet suits on, air cylinder on the back, fins and mask ready and we jumped into water. We tried different things underwater for around 40 minutes ranging from how to communicate, breath, hold the mask,  remove water from mask, control ear pressure etc. We also practiced different situations such as when one loses his breathing tube, how to get other one, how to ask for help. Balancing was big problem and that was resolved by adding weights. We also tried how to go up and down in water by controlling our breathing and I failed miserably in that. Since we did not have time, we wrapped up.

I was not confident and Brett has the similar concerns. Scott once again gave us confidence and scheduled another practice session next morning. Then we were hit with the bad news, next day was going to be coldest in Florida history and none of the boats would be going in water. Scott had a contingency plan for that too, he prepared us to wear two wet suits, so we would be warm. But that adds to another problem, wet suits gives you more buoyancy so we need to carry more weight. Scott also arranged for a boat to go in waters next day.

Next day practice session was good. We had two wet suits on, more weights and it was freezing cold but we were determined. Spending extra time underwater in pool gave me much more confidence and I was ready to jump in water. We practiced how to get on to boat, jump from the boat and other necessary tricks. We were set to jump in Atlantic. I bought an underwater camera so I can shoot something, though the chances were low considering most of the time I would be trying to make things work, but I wanted to capture the amazing experience we were about to encounter.

It was a 45 seat boat, carrying only 8-9 people to dive. Once it was in sea I realized the crazy thing we were about to do. The day before I was making comments about how I have never see a sea calmer then this, but things had changed. It was choppy, 3 feet high waves, dense fog and extreme cold. With these kind of situations I would not even go on a boat but I don’t know what force has been driving me. We reached our dive point, our captain briefed us, Scott gave us last set of instructions (video below) and we were ready (or not?). The plan was Drew and other divers will get into water first, Scott will go next, Wes and Stacy will jump in after that and Brett and I were about to jump last. Scott would take 2 people at a time to bottom and then we will move around and see corals for some time. Things went on fine for few few minutes, I had not jumped into water yet, and Stacy did not like the water. So she came back in the boat, I had no idea why but that scared me. Then boat’s anchor slipped and people were trying to fix it and I had no clue what was going on. I was not sure what I was about to do, rocking boat has already made me sea sick and all this was adding to confusion.

Finally, I jumped in water, hold it to my line and reached next to Scott. Then I started my descent following all the instructions I knew. With the complete precision I started moving downwards. But as I mentioned things change in real life, my ear pressure was changing rapidly, so I used the technique I had learned. But next thing that went wrong was water inside mask. I tried to remove it and was partially successful. So I went deeper and almost reached the bottom, I waved at my fellow divers, stayed for around a minute, tried to look around but could not see much, no underwater life at all. But I had water in my mask again, I tried the technique and failed. My mask had a lot of water in it, so I came back on surface. I repeated the same trick again of going back in and came back after some time. I had tasted salt water and that was end of my dive. Getting back into the boat was another bit of adventure, I had panicked a bit and I could not hear what the guy on boat was saying, cold was adding up to all the confusion. Finally, I was on boat, safe and sound. I did not consider it as dive because I did not get to see the fish but other said, since I was breathing underwater for sometime, I made the dive.

Overall, it was a great experience. Given other day and time, when things are better and I get a chance to see the beautiful underwater life, I would jump again. But this first try could not have been possible without Scott and his confidence. He gave me the confidence, proper training and facilitated the jump. I would not jump into Atlantic on such a crazy day without being in such expert hands. Thanks Scott for such a wonderful experience.

Another person’s experience from same team.

I got this copy (electronic) of newspaper from 15th August 1947. This shows how Time of India reported India’s independence.

Newspaper in PDF

PS: As per my understanding this post does not infringe any copyright law as it should come under fair use. If there is an issue, I will take it down.

Today we had a chance to be with Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt and former Gov Mark Warner. This was a live blog (but could not be updated that time).

11:31 AM: Mark Warner (MW) and Eric Schmidt (ES) walk into the hall, crowd stand up and applaud.

MW talking about Schmidt/Google, setting up the context for today’s talk. He is explaining how one role of IT was to no one has to move out of city for the job. It has not achieved completely even after tremendous growth in IT sector.

MW: For every election, politicians say this is the most important election and this time we are not lying. (Crowd bursts into laughter).

He emphasizes on four factors that will contribute a lot for winning and competing in this global economy.

1. Education and Innovation should be the top priority.

2. Value add should be innovation capital, US’ value add by innovation to GDP ratio is very low as compared to other countries.

3. Healthcare is most important because it give competitive advantage to individuals as well as industries.

4. Infrastructure should be developed – roads, rails and broadband are three major areas where US should develop. He gives example of how Shanghai has the fastest railway system, talks about US is ranked 16^th in world in terms of broadband connectivity.

How we frame all of these together and move America ahead. Talk moves to energy sector, as it will solve a lot of energy related issues as well as generate jobs. More emphasis on energy, one should think about it as national issues rather than Democrats or Republicans issue. Conservation of energy, domestic drilling, and nuclear energy are some topics we should discuss more often. Over a period of 5-10 years by just conserving energy we can change the country. Talk moves to automobile industry and how they can improve vehicles with the help of state governments. He feels some stricter laws, tax exception can help automobile companies in US to innovate and sell.

11:44 AM: ES in center now. He talks about the first politician to visit Google was Gov. Warner because He wanted to know how networks will evolve, how more jobs will be created rather than asking for funding from Google. He was the one who went there to learn, when was the last time when any politician wanted to learn.

11: 47 AM: ES talks about his childhood in Blacksburg. Gone Talks about Lyric Theater and with the wind was his favorite movie. He is telling a story about his brand new red bicycle, he parked it in front of police station (which is just across the street) instead of theater as he thought it might be safe. When he comes out of movie he finds his bike was stolen. He goes to the police station, it’s a crisis my bike is stolen. Officer said, come up to the jail. He opens the jail and bike was in lost and found. There were no prisoners so he kept the bicycle there. Blacksburg is a peaceful town with no crimes.

He says Blacksburg is a small town with great values. One of the most wired places in America and still it has not lost the same touch he felt 20 years back, it’s the same small place and prisoner free jails.

He is talking about MW now. There is a set of policies; his energy plan is the approach we need. He is telling many people ask him the question – why don’t we solve all the problems at once? Is there a way where we can solve all at once? My answer is yes, all problems will be solved if we solve our energy crisis, it will act as stimulus program. It does not only short term problem, but solves long term problem too. It will give us leadership in new technology area. Energy and Communication can be linked together. He gives an example: Imagine a situation where we have a Chevy + battery, we have smart energy grid, a complex algorithm to find out when to charge and when to discharge, it’s an obvious solution and it will saves us trillions of dollars. But we don’t do it!

This is the time somebody should take leadership, Govt should understand run this as business, create jobs, working on energy will lead us to future. This will reduce dependency on other countries too.

Q&A session:

Q: How do we solve energy crisis and job problem at same time?

MW: Jobs will be created if we have more power plants. He talks about the smart-energy-grid. If we can create power source, wind, bio, nuclear and then connect it to grid which should transfer energy to more stressed areas. We should grow [some crop to generate fuel].

ES: Solar in south west done right will create a million jobs. Grassland should be used to generate wind power, Eastern Texas has huge potential in that. Here in Virginia we have thermal resources which are not used properly. Combination of smart grid and more power sources will generate jobs as well as solve energy crisis. [He talks about Venezuela]. Oil prices have gone down, why we should let one country dictate us. We should try to solve the crisis on our own and reduce dependency and smart grid is the solution to that.

He moves on how innovation in IT and telecom innovation did not allow Japanese dominance in 90s. A decade ago, 8 out of 10 solar companies were US. But that has changed, now European countries dominate, whose failure is this?

Q: Why do we need government to help energy companies to get into this field, once any organization sees potential in this business they will jump in it?

ES: If we don’t have infrastructure and a company tries to do something. Let’s say they buy some land to generate wind power and they are successful in doing so but they just don’t need energy, they need infrastructure to transfer energy, loans for funding. Many companies have gone bankrupt tried to do so because government did not help. So, government will have to push, organizations are waiting for government to do something, once infrastructure is ready companies will jump on opportunities. He gives an example here: It was ARPA who created network, basic research was done by government and then IT companies like Google grew on that infrastructure.

Q: Education system has fallen behind, European and Asian have gone ahead in math and science education. What should be done to boost math and science education in US?

MW: We lose enormous number of students because they fail in math or science. We have a system in which we put least experienced in weakest or remotest schools. But need to put best teachers in weakest school and improve it. We can have an incentive program for teachers to move into such areas. This program has already started in VA and should not be used everywhere.

We need an education system, which also deals with tech education, not just engineering. High school diploma along with a tech certification to improve number of tech people in the country. Currently out of 80k high school only 10k gets tech certificates. This number should increase.

Why high school has to be 4 year and college 3 years. We should have a program where last year in high school should be clubbed with junior year of college. That will reduce the time period for college education, will keep a kid focused and will reduce cost for students. [This is his plan]

ES: Notices how precise that answer was. We have to solve this problem and agree with Gov’s plan

Q: We have the architecture and technology for white collar jobs to be done at home (telecommuting) and that will solve energy crisis too. Why don’t we follow that approach?

ES: Most people prefer to go to workplace. We like to put all of them together and that improves results. People commute less if offices are put in most dense areas.

MW: We have that as an option but bandwidth is an issue. We do not want to increase density in metropolitan area so we should spread the organization outside where cities, so commute time will reduce for people.

Q: Will Google open some facilities in VA?

ES: We have some connection in VA and we use it.

Q: [She first thanks Eric for her scholarship that she is getting from Google] Geosciences has been essential for energy, oil, dumping nuclear waste etc. Why the budgets are declining in this field when everyone wants to solve energy crisis.

MW: We invested a lot in 2004 (when he was Governor) to graduate student specifically for same reason. I do think government need not pick winners and loser, but try to spur the basic research. Research should be a national priority.

ES: We need more political leaders who understand importance of research (and believe in science – this was a joke and crowd burst into laughter). If you look at business opportunities, the economic value in energy industry is very less, so we need to have a market (we already are) but government should try to do something to push these effort and assure investors, that will increase the cash flow and would be better for research.

MW: There is nothing in between turning off lights and buying a Prius when it comes to energy crisis. We should have ways too and educate people. Japanese have same standard of living and their per capital energy usage is half of ours.

ES: We should reduce organization consumption that should set a standard for all. He gives an example; he went to a conference long back and found out about efforts than an organization takes. He asks facilities team and they have a plan with $2 million (which is very low amount for Google) investment and will take around 2 years for returns. Eric asks them, then why didn’t you tell us this plan. They replied, you never asked us. He says, it’s easy to conserve energy but no one cares about it. We have to increase awareness.

Q: How can Cloud computing help us in energy crisis.

ES: This is first university in US to have all applications online. And this not only is a good example of cloud computing but also tells us how efficiency has increased tremendously. This was not done necessarily to solve energy crisis, but it helps. IT has a role to play in it.

He is talking about how technology has improved over years. We have cell phone, with camera, GPS and camera. We will have knowledge economy and that will give us competitive advantage.

MW: IT should not just be used in few field, they can be used across fields.

ES: Power of IT to be used in healthcare, an individual should have his record which an individual has control over. It can be in electronic format. [I think most people did not get this hint, but I am sure this is in line with the current rumors about Google’s new service – electronic medical record in the cloud]

Q: [A question about how good Android is doing and what is the future]

ES: He talks about technology it has and other details. He tells about how an apps such as bar code reader can be developed, which will find the cheapest rates in the area. [Crowd is pretty excited after hearing this, no surprise this side; this has been discussed on TWiT many times]

Q: What are the barriers in developing public transport infrastructure? Will we have better system as European countries?

MW: We did not have any major infrastructure reforms after Eisenhower. Our aim was to develop some industrial sector and we succeeded in that, but he thinks funding to develop this kind of infrastructure is not possible in near future, State government funding are reducing and there are other issues such as financial crisis which should be taken care first.

[Five more minutes remaining now, there will be one more question. But I can’t sit here, will miss my Statistics class otherwise. It was a nice session, Lyric theater was full and I believe many people were not allowed in. It was good that we came an hour early to stand in queue. I miss my D40 though; a nice photo would be good.]

Disclaimer: Answers and question are not exactly what were spoken, this was my reconstruction.

List of twitterits present: @adese @labsji @gbot @adityamishra @hnprashanth @jerrymannel @kv @f1 @2s @netra @sanjukta, @privarma @ujj @swaroopch @kaargocult @mayankdhingra @cruisemaniac @anant @holydevil @mataal @bhuwan @scorpion032, @hephail @neogarfield @thej @prsn and @shailen, @eventsbangalore

This Bar Camp as always was fun, attended a lot of sessions and met many new people.

Lists of sessions attended :

1. Blogathon meet – Met Ujjwal, Sandil, Meera, Sanjukta and many other people. Most of the discussion was around the concept of Blogathon, what we want to achieve from this, scope of topics, judging panel etc.
2. Self Defense session (by Kashif) : It was a very interesting session, mostly dealt with what can you do if attacked by autorickshwalas, goons and other similar species. Kashif talked about weak point, how to get out of the circle, and running away (there was a session on that too).
3. LifeInlines – Autobiography in lines : This was a new venture, but most of the people felt it is like twitter/pownce with extra level of privacy options. Some people did not like the idea of it as a closed system, but I think its in alpha and will definitely improve with time.
4. RangDe.org : A micro lending site, really nice initiative by a couple. We need something like this in India.
5. NgoPost : Another initiative to show case what NGOs are doing and how information can be shared. Most of the people were not impressed as it is just Pligg customized for NGOs.
6. CommonFloor.com : I would like to say WOW here. An excellent effort by IIT Roorkee guys, its a kind of networking site but which makes perfect sense and has day to day use also.
7. CIIE (By Aditi) : Center for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship, an initiative by IIMA. It was nice informative session and now I know where to go when I want to have a startup.
8. Session of Problems faced by Startups (by NSRcel and Kickstart) : It was an excellent session but I could not attend it completely. They talked about problems faced by startups in all fields (resources, IP, VCs…) and tried to come up with some solutions. It was the best session of the day. (Few might not agree who attended the ‘feedback’ session)
9. Twitter-Up Bangalore : Best part of the day when all the Twitterists met for first time. One person defined it as ‘ a session to put handle to real persons from online identities’.

And Yes, I forgot the most important thing. Attraction for the day was Thej’s new ASUS EEE PC. It is really cool device, nice, small and cheap. I am sure this will open a complete new series of laptops in coming times.

Apart from this met a lot of new people and got some nice photography tips. Leaving for BarCamp now, day 2 details will surely be put up.

Links :

1. BCB6 Photo Set
2. Thej’s post and a video.
3. barcampbangalore6

I never had so much of learning in one day. I understand the concept of un-conferencing but could never imagine the fun of it, it was a place where language was no barrier, you talk in binary and people could understand you.

Devcamp started with introduction of session and Martin Fowler explaining the real meaning of un-conferencing. First session I attended was – what applications fall under enterprise-grade apps and is Facebook an enterprise app? People discussed about uptime, trust, scalability, future proof features, pluggable arch etc to support their views. Next session was on developing a publishing website in minimum time using open source utilities. Learnt about RoR features, ngniX and a search engine they were using.

I moved on to a session – How to hack Nintendo DS and what all can we do with it. It was very interesting session and now I want to explore same things on my iPod too. At this point of time it was getting hard for me to select which session should I attend, I wanted to go everywhere, so I had to use my lazy strategy, sit at one place only and if you don’t find current session interesting move to different place. It was a session on Django and how you can write small apps for some of your hobbies. This session I not only learnt about technology but also about wargaming and how interesting it can be.

Next session was on RoR, not from a fanboy perspective, since I had heard a lot about Ruby and its advantages I enjoyed the session, got more idea about Scala. Then I moved to open area and did some networking, learnt about a company just based on FB apps.

Martin on unconferencing and sharing experience

After lunch, I got time to meet Martin, I told him how much I liked his paper on IoC. From that I moved to a session on Lipikaar – a FF plugin using that you can type in any language, this is not based on dictionary but on phonetics. At first we did not like the idea and were in favor of ‘Indic translation’ but as we played around with it more it seems easier and better. We spent next one hour breaking it but couldn’t do it. Went to a XUL session and had a nice discussion. Javascript session followed it and we discussed about design principles, editors and its future.

Last session of the day was on semantic web and I must say it was the best session of the day. I don’t have much idea on the topic, but since it started from ground level I could participate in it.

It was 6:30 PM and I did not realize how fast time has passed, it was a memorable day where I wished I could have multiple instances of me so I could have attended more sessions.

PS : I thought of devcamp as just developers talk, but it was more than that, most of the sessions were on how people have started a startup and were sharing ideas and getting feedback.

Related Posts :

• Live from Devcamp
• Another Live blog
• Devcamp picks up steam, Acknowledgment and Thanks
• Flickr photos
• One more Live blog
• Link to all blogs @ wiki