Notes from OpenStack India Day

I know this post should have been published a bit earlier, but I have been sick for few days and therefore this delay!

Last week we fervently celebrated  Openstack India Day. It was the fourth one in the past 3 years. I am very happy the way the OpenStack project has taken over and particularly the OpenStack India community. This would not have been possible without the effort and dedication of our organizers, Sajid, Kavit, Himanshu, Kiran and other local members.

Sridhar with his SDN/Neutron session.
Sridhar with his SDN/Neutron session.

These are some interesting observations from my side about the overall event:

  1. The system integrators in Indian subcontinent are taking OpenStack project seriously. I had the opportunity to meet the representatives from Wipro, Infosys [they were also our sponsors] and TCS. They have a dedicated team of 20+ people working in house on various components of the project.  
  2. For the first time we had multiple track sessions in a one-day event and it was indeed a great success. The conference room was packed with over 300 people, mostly with developers background.
  3. Representatives from the Openstack Foundation were also present at the event. I enjoyed the gregarious presence of and keynote from Mark Collier, COO Openstack Foundation.
  4. Some of the college attendees relayed very interesting questions. I am glad that they are actively taking part in the event and preparing to build a career around it.
  5. Learnt that some of the e-commerce & media firms are trying Openstack on their workloads.
  6. We added an extra job board, because most of them are hiring.
  7. Last not the least, I am extremely happy to see Salman, representative of Aptira organizing the workshop. I met him two years back in his college during an OpenStack workshop, and today he is a OpenStack expert !

I would hope the momentum remains the same and we get to celebrate many more OpenStack India day events.

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Mark/Kiran/Kavit & rest, after event dinner.

My problem with Twitter feeds of Indian VC’s & Investors.

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India is turning into a startups hub with the amount of fund flowing in from US/Japan/China and other countries.  Some of the startups got an early exit making VCs & founders rich.  Anyways, this post is not about funding scene in India. It is all about these investors and VC’s who are glorifying portfolios in twitter timelines.

The Problem with this

  1. Thumping new funding round for portfolio is no guarantee for portfolio turning into Unicorn.
  2. Your tweets put other founders in portfolio under some kind of pressure who are in raising boat and as a result instead of building business all they think about is raising round.
  3. You turn into a RT/Tweeting exercise portfolio instead of sharing your wisdom with the followers who are looking up to you for useful suggestions and advices.
  4. Some of these same founders whom you have been glorifying get egotistical and even start playing hardball with you as you are no more a majority stakeholder in it. So you basically gave an ego boost to them. We keep hearing such stories on regular basis.
  5. VCs job is to mentor, teach and inspire. It’s not making portfolio fund announcements or press releases. Do you similarly tweet when one of the founders leave your portfolio company or one of your company dies?

My Suggestion

  1. Keep a separate twitter feed which is meant for catering portfolio related announcements.
  2. Ask all your followers to visit that feed for all kinds of PR, funding, merger, announcement deals for your portfolio.
  3. We are looking forward to learn from you and your timeline. You are supposed to inspire us, share your thoughts, not portfolio announcements.

Encounter with Indian Ocean

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Before

Saturday I along with Archit & Krishna went for Indian Ocean concert, Shastry you get all the credits for letting me know about this buddy. 😀

I am a big fan of Indian Ocean and on record this was first time in my life i attended any live concert. Apology if I am hurting someone but my prejudice has always been that  live concerts are all about alcohol/weed/women & BS.  I was not wrong because even at this concert I witnessed the same.

It was great interacting with the old folks Rahul Ram and Amit Kilam [Member of Indian Ocean Band], I was not sure if  i should go and say hello to them because of my fucked up experience with Manoj Bajpayee at Patna airport.  Rahul/Amit were so down to earth and yes we had good conversation for over 10-15 mins, unlike others I preferred not taking any pics with them. I am fucking tired of my friends taking selfies with folks/celebs and sharing it on social media.

The whole environment was eccentric and to my surprise a lot many attendees were lead singers and guitarists from small/local bands. They were attending the event to learn from it.

I am happy that they played all the numbers i been listening all these years from Bhor to kandisha. I wish them all the luck, BTW  sushmit has left the band & yes its sad. But as they say, SHOW must go on.

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Band in full swing, photo credit : Archit

They are coming with next album in 2017 & i am eagerly waiting for it.

 

Rest in peace Kalam Sir

The untimely demise of a great citizen, the people’s president is no more and I am deeply saddened with his demise.Dr. Abdul Kalam was India’s hero, a worthy scientist with indomitable spirit and an impeccable leader the nation was lucky to call President at one point of time. He carried out his duties of office with dignity and reverence, respect to all and worked towards the upliftment of the country in the field of science. He has adorned many revering titles such as the Bharat Ratna, the Missile Man and India’s Ex-President among others. He loved teaching and was passionate to bring about change for the youth, by the youth and preferred to be remembered as a “Teacher”. His infectious warmth and loving nature saw the whole nation mourning his loss. Was it irony or just fate?, that his final moments came while delivering a lecture to young students in Shillong.  India will surely miss this great man, a proud Indian and one we got to call People’s President during our lifetime.


“Apj abdul kalam” by Kannan Shanmugam studio,Main Road, Kollam – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

If you are curious about why he is so incredibly popular, and why his loss has the nation mourning, you have to read some of the books he wrote to clearly understand his vision. My advice to the youth who were fortunate to get to know him during their life, follow his advice, it will make a difference to this nation.

My Take On An EMI Free Life

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My good friend Sridhar and I dined out for lunch at a Mangalorean restaurant. We liked the place, the food and service was amicable. At lunch, we discussed technology, professions, family and life in general. It was a good meetup.

Today’s post is to discuss the one thing we examined closely. The topic was just  how our life is turning into a mundane, robotic machine where almost everyone is thriving on loans, paying EMI’s and surviving the luxuries of the day.

My take and the same is what I mentioned to Sridhar is that I would love to lead an EMI free life which he was quick to dispute was almost impossible in today’s day and age. He says that once you get married you have to invest in buying a house/car, take care of your kids needs along with several responsibilities and during that time money is hard to come by and so it is a wise option to take out a loan.

So here I am writing this blog challenging  myself that even when I get married I will continue to lead a loan free life, which I believe is also stress free. The purpose of this blog is to measure out if I will someday lose out on my bet. 🙂

My dear friend Sridhar, so here I am, as per our conversation, the blog post is up. It also means that the clock is ticking for me.  I will definitely need some good luck. 😀

Startup Ideas #3

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In continuation with my previous post to share startup ideas that I would love to see flourish, here is my second post with more adept ideas that should become startups.

Startup Ideas For The Week:

  1. Beard stylist: The trend of gentlemen keeping a beard is not new. It will be great idea to have a shop where anyone can walk in and get the perfect style fit for his beard.
  2. Fashion Designer on an app: With advance technology and increased purchasing power anyone can have his/her own personal designer/stylist simply in the form of an app. The app should have something like a video conferencing option recommending what to wear and how to style oneself.
  3. Adding Dating as reward for buying via e-commerce site : Imagine if you have an ecommerce website which connects you to a blind date on your buying preferences and wishlists. So in simple terms Amazon+Tinder+Facebook= Dating App.
  4. Connecting street sellers in hyperlocal: Everyone is talking about next boom, the hyperlocal delivery. As a result of which a lot of street sellers are bearing the brunt.Imagine an app connecting your local grocer via s simple application with payment options. This way these app driven organizations won’t be competing with brick & mortar shops but helping in making the local grocers life better.
  5. Tinder for Grandparents: It is like having a dating app with membership fees only for the elderly people. We should remember exclusivity increases value of the product.

These are my ideas for the week. I would love to hear back from you, I know some of these ideas may sound crazy but what benefits some could also be a waste for another, hence choose wisely.

 

OpenStack 5th Birthday celebration Bangalore India.

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OpenStack itself has come a long way and the birthday celebrations witnessed over 40 enthusiastic participants. We spent most of the time discussing Openstack while answering intriguing questions about the project the development and the overall ecosystem. It was good to see creative upstream contributors talking to the newer developers, sharing their experiences and advices alike. We wound off the event with cake cutting followed by a pizza party.

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I hope the OpenStack journey continues to progress, flourish and grow as we continue to celebrate more birthdays in the upcoming years with newer upstream contributors and more users.