New Delhi Times - Gaurav Bhatnagar reporting from New Delhi, India

Its 9 AM and around 10 of us are here. Adobe office is pretty awesome. Sessions are broadly categorized in 4 sections - "Web 2.0", "AJAX", "Mobile", and everything else. We will kick off around 9:30.

I will try to update this post through the day.

Introductions done. Around 40 participants registered so far. Everybody described themselves using three "tags". How much more web2.0 can you get? :)

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First Session - Ruby on Rails by Manik Juneja
RoR apps: basecamp, tadalist, writeboard, Campfire, 43things, odeo, Blinksale, numsum

Philosophy: Dont repeat yourself! + Convention over configuration

Models have data as well as business rules that apply to it (eg. validates_presence_of)

Row level operations happen at object level while Table level operations happen at Class level.

Dynamic method names??? find_by_first_name would automatically figure out that search is on column named first_name. Holy crap! How cool is that?

You csn define relationships for models.

ActionPack - two Ruby modules for V and C of MVC.

ActionView - templated based html rendering

Q&A
1. How do you integrate RoR in existing applications/database schemas?
A. It is possible but not as productive as starting from scratch. Default can be over ridden so definitely possible.

2. How do you install?
A. Check the website. It runs on Apache. IIS not recommended because of some issues.

3. What were the three projects you implemented in 4 months?
A. Drag n drop shopping cart, basic CMS, gaming applications

4. Performance?
A. Yes, there are issues because MVC doesn't scale.

5. Developing mobile applications?
A. Not sure, not my domain.

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Session 2: Making Magic Happen: Predictive fetching in RIA/AJAX by Jon B

Quotable quote: "RIA was a term first used by Macromedia to describe what you can do with Flash which is not annoying"

prefetching data as a cost v/s benefit tradeoff. Use metrics and real world usage data to determine what to prefetch.

I think it makes sense to capture mostly Q&A from now on. The slides will be available online anyway.

Q&A
1. Can we really use a heuristic based approach for critical business apps?
A. Sure you can. There is no harm in pre downloading business data because they anyway have access to it.

2. Its not really heuristic because its based on actual metrics.
A. Yes. Some sort of self learning system can be developed. (Interesting thought!)

3. Handling multiple simultaneous requests at the same time can be hard technically.
A. You bet!

4. Is prefetching really needed when there are fat pipes available?
A. In m experience pipes are never fat enough!

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Session 3: Flex

Why Flex?
1. Easy to learn and maintain the code - OOP model, flex builder based on exlipse
2. Easy to extend
3. Integration with legacy data sources
4. SDK free
5. Active community (flexcoders.org)

Q&A
1. (my question) All RIAs have this issue that the middle tier (and database) is essentially exposed as a web service. So how do I prevent somebody else from developing an alternate RIA using my middle tier.
A. The enterprise edition will have some support for that.

2. Usability of RIAs
A. Flex is a technology. Up to people how they use it!

3. How does client side JS/Ajax talk to Flash?
A. Kevin Lynch has a sample application on his blog which demos that.

4. Costs?
A. SDK will be free. IDE will not be free. Pricing TBD

We will have to split into two sessions after the next session. Both the tracks have really exciting talks. I am torn!

Session 4: Flex demo by Manish Jethani
Manish is developing a flex app live using vi on Wndows. Vi on Windows! Never seen that before!

Oh, this is reminding me so much of Avalon development I used to do in Microsoft.

Missed most of this demo but Flex looks cool. Must check it out!

There seems to be some cool Javascript support which I missed out on.

You can apply CSS to Flex apps. Cool!
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Flickr feed is here http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/barcampdelhi/ Rakesh has already posted a few pics.
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Break for tea!

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baah! Jon had to borrow my laptop for using in the other conference room so I couldn't conitnue my live blogging. And then he couldn't even use the laptop. Oh well, at least I paid more attention to the presentations :) I am up next to next so i will stop again after this session.

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Session: Telecom infrastructure: Kunal Bajaj

65 million mobile connections in India. Growth exploded when rates became comparable/lower than land line rates.

India has lowest operating costs in mobile industry in the world.

Broadband - we havent seen same kind of growth as mobile. Early perception was that internet is not really needed. PC costs were very high. These kind of things drove early decision making at govt. levels. At some point, it was decided to learn from mobile growth story and apply it to broadband. Early perception was that broadband was elitist.

Broadband is relevant to developing nations: call centres, data processing centres are serving developed countries. Who will serve domestic industry? Distributed call centres based out of small cities using broadband. People get non-farm employment in rurual areas.

We need the infrastructure to be able tp pull it off.

Broadband also enables transparent dealings with the govt. More visibility.

TRAI identified 11 hurdles preventing growth of boadband. Check the slides.

Everybody is complaining that 256kbps is not really broadband by most definitions.

Kunal is displaying a yahoo isp ad in Japan - free high speed 50 Mbps, free ip phone, free WLAN router and whole lot of stuff for $35!!! Holy crap!

Korea - cyber community based apps like Daum, Freechal, Iloveschool are seeing a huge response. This has led to huge amount of e-commerce in Korea. Relevant for India as well as target audience is housewives in both countries. PC Bangs (cyber cafes) also led to PC adoption. Same is happening in India as well.
In Korea number of voip phones will over take POTS soon.

India will overake China in annual subscriber addition in 2006 itself.

Between India and China there will be 1 Billion subscribers by 2010.

What will be the predominant access device in India?
PC?
STB?
Mobile Phone?

Q&A
Missed it. Had to go to the restroom. When you gotta go you gotta go :)
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My session is up next. Will continue after it. It has been a totally awesome barcamp so far! Huge thanks to Adobe for hosting the event!

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Just finished my presentation. I think it was decently received. Entrepreneurship is clearly on the mind of many here. Laptop battery is running low so I might have to just sign off for the day in a bit. Hemanshu has live blogged my session here
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Session: Knowledge Management 2.0 - Manish Dhingra
This is something we are actually thinking of implementing in our company. Manish is introducing what structured blogging means. That is hard to describe but fortunately the audience is knowledgable.

What is knowledge management?
Learning and capturing knowledge gained from experience.
Not having to re-inevent the wheel
Code snippets, documentation, product evals, config. tricks. design tips etc.

Why KM?
- leverage organization's collective learning
- empower every individual by the knowledge of other indivs
- foster innovation
- learn from other people's mistakes
- increase productivity
- ease responsibility transition
- knowledge is power

"Wish you had told me this before.... I just spent 2 hours on a job that could have been done in 2mins" --- we have all heard that before. That is the problem KM solves.

Structured Blogging
- The process of adding structure to blog posts
- Customizable template architecture - so basically the KM idea is to customise these templates for knowledge articles

Manish is demoing SB plugin in Wordpress. I think that drives the point home very well. Extending SB to publish knowledge artifacts. KM artifacts correspond to microcontent definitions. Integrated search functionality. You get commenting for free. Use blogging system's "draft" feature for reviewing content before it goes into the KM database.

Q&A
1. How do you get people to distribute content?
A. Comments are a motivating factor. Reward systems can be implemented. Can be made part of performance review.

2. Google has its own approach adding structure to user content (google base). So how does SB get traction?
A. The need is there and the plugin is always available out there.

Missed some of the QA because I mispalced power cord for the laptop and battery went low. Interesting discussion around SB. Adoption is hindered because the search engines dont understand structured content yet. At the same time, blogging tools dont take it seriously yet because of the same reason. (my thought). Vicious circle!

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I am feeling terrible on missing out on some of the sessions. But there was way we could have pulled off 25 odd sessions without doing them parallely.
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Session: SnapStream Media - Rakesh Agrawal

(my note) I am a huge PVR fan and actually used the trial version of BeyondTV. I am jazzed that he could make it to BarCamp Delhi!

Coincidence that he is here coz he had to attend a wedding in Delhi (free wifi also helped :) ) Rakesh is passionate about Delhi. His blog is "lambi pooch" which translates to "long tail" and sounds really funny in Hindi.
(my note) I am sitting with Dipankar and Anand, our IIT interns from last summer. They did serious PVR research for us last year and we are exchanging knowing glances. Rakesh is asking how many have heard of PVR. Well, we sure have!

Average American watches 2.5 hours of TV every day.

Rakesh is using a pre-release PC remote control called Firefly mini.

BillG demoed BeyondTV as part of XP launch. Cool!

I asked if Tivo came first, or BryondTV? Tivo came first. Tivo popularized the concept of PVR.

BeyondTV demo - slick UI using D3D. The EPG is well populated - (my note) that is the biggest problem in Indian market. "Smart Skip" feature lets you skip commercial breaks. "Show Squeeze" transcodes the video to different bit rates and file sizes. Subscribers can login to the website and schedule shows remotely.

Q&A
1. Legal implications of recording digital content?
A. That is a concern but it is legal for personal viewing.

2. image recongition, face recognition can create interesting scenarios for PVRs.
A. Yes.

3. In the indian context, PVRs can lead to large scale piracy.
A. Yes, I have been to Palika Bazar.

4. (my question) Why are PVRs still restricted to early adopters?
A. Awareness is not there. TV tuner card installation is a very tech. thing. Windows Media Center is increasing awareness and number of PC pre-installed with tv tuner cards.

This is the last session of the day.
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Session: Personal Information Management with a twist - Nazim, Dipankar

Problem in current approach:
1. Individual oriented approach
2. No way to analyse accumlated data
3. Sync of data across individuals is difficult if not impossible

Why re-invent
1. Group based approach - group can be family or business contacts etc
2. Analyze collected data to predict schedules

Current PIMs
- chandler
- thunderbird/sunbird
- outlook
- evolution
Problem with all is that syncing data is not possible since data is stored on your machine.

What do we need
- online service
- store data locally
- sync data with online servers

Group based approach allows suggesting meeting times based on free/busy data of the meeting participants.

Concerns
1. Security - orkut has a model where u can choose what appears to whom based on relationship (friend, close friend etc)

Technology
1. Simple
2. Easy to learn and maintain

Python is the programming lang. being used to develop this system. Python has several advantages including large number of libraries, easy programmability, easy licensing models.

Using twisted network library.
Axiom object database for DB. Axiom is built on top of SQLite which doesnt scale well.
Mantissa appliction server built on top of Twisted and Axiom
Nevow is the HTML template toolkit
Postresql RDBMS

Offline clients
- firefox extension
- plugin to their favorite email/groupware clients

Web will NOT the primary interface for this. This is because analysis of data will be slow and web app might become unresponsive.

Q&A
1. (my ques) Why use these technologies considering that they are not as widely adopted as say, PHP
A. These techs. are actually quite popular. See KLive.

2. Store as FOAF?
A. Better to store in a structure that is more adaptable.
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So that was BarCamp Delhi! I am dead tired right now so I will write more tomorrow. But we can safely say that BarCamp Delhi was a success! :)

barcampdelhi