Ponder point

Thanks WordPress.com! Moving on to new domain.

arunram — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 20:26:56 +0000

I have decided to move my blog out of WordPress.com. But you know what I am staying with WordPress…. It doesnt get better than this! I am surely reminded of the lyrics….

You can checkout any time you like,
But you can never leave! …

Thanks WordPress.com! I have decided to host my blog on the domain www.arunram.net. This blog’s new home is going to be www.arunram.net/blog. Future posts will be only on the new URL.

Please update your feeds or bookmarks. And stay tuned!

Barcamp Bangalore 5 - the team behind it!

arunram — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 16:06:56 +0000

A week after Barcamp Bangalore 2007 winter edition aka BCB5, the team that worked behind the scenes to put it together met up at Rendezvous at Koramangala to chill out and have fun post event. After BCB5 tag line was “chill out”!

Its a great team and we all enjoy great camaraderie and team spirit. Every one of these guys has a busy week day. Come weekend we all came together to think BCB and its execution.

The picture says it all - the energy, the spirit and the passion to team and make a difference.

From left clock wise…. Amit Singh (green jacket), Arun Ramarathnam (yours truly!), Kesava Reddy, Shourya Sarcar (red tee), Suresh B, Kiran Jonnalagadda (face partially hidden), Aashish Solanki, Pradeep BV (struggling to raise his face), Akash Mahajan, Nishant Baranwal, Srinivas Yelandur and Harinath Pudipeddi (hand in pocket).

It is one great team that rocks!

KAMP - focussed on Knowledge Management

arunram — Sat, 24 Nov 2007 02:55:35 +0000

I am looking forward to KAMP today. KAMP is an event using the barcamp format focussed and themed on Knowledge Management.

This going to be very interesting. A quick look at the registrants gives me a feeling that many of the participants are from a “corporate” background and may not be familiar with the barcamp format or philosophy. It would interesting to see how things play out at the event. I am looking forward to the event and sessions since the KM is of interest to me.

My interest in KM is centered around how KM methods can be used in the context of managing strategic accounts that run over a few years. Such accounts tend to be a microcosm in themselves and poses a unique set of challenges.
I have also been experimenting with some FOSS tools to put together a compelling model for addressing some of these challenges. Looking forward to sharing experiences and learnings with folks interested in the topic.

After being part of putting together last weeks Barcamp Bangalore 5 , two other barcamps this year and PMPC 2007, I am looking forward to being an active participant! I would have *all* the time to discuss and meet interesting people. If you are attending KAMP and are interested in similar themes, lets catch up by the sidelines.

BoKs to the fore - Its now BABOK for Business Analysts

arunram — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 03:45:40 +0000

BoKs or the “Body of Knowledge”. Does this ring a bell? I am sure it does… Remember the PMBOK from PMI?

How many BoKs do you think there are in vogue? Here are some that I know…

PMBOK - Project Management BoK from the Project Management Institute (PMI).
SWEBOK - Software Engineering BoK from IEEE.
Usability - Usability BoK from the Usability Professionals’ Association
PDMA BOK - BoK for Product Development from Product Development and Management Association (PDMA).
CST CBOK - The Certified Software Tester BoK from QAI.

And then there is the International Institute of Business Analysis’ (IIBA) BABOK for Business Analysts gaining prevalence and traction.

The BABOK intends to be a standard for Business Analysts. It defines Business Analysis, The BA profession, Knowledge Areas and key skills required for a BA. Certifications based on the BABOK are now being offered in the US. Certified BA are called Certified Business Analysis Professionals (CBAP™ ). IIBA model is similar to that of PMI at a macro level with regional chapters for professionals to network and interact.

The interesting thing about all BoKs is the following:

they bring standardized definitions and terms for the profession.
they rally the community of professional around the standard.
they create local communities of professionals in the field to meetup and network.
they are built around a certification model.

and most importantly certification is a measure of awareness of the profession but by no means a measure of guaranteed results.

What are you experiences with BoKs? Are there any other you have come across besides the above?

EDIT:

Came across a few other attempts at BoKs that might one might find of interest…

Barcamp at GOD’s own country!

arunram — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 20:21:06 +0000

Barcamps are now spreading like wild fire in the country. After the usual suspects - New Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Pune - we now move on to a Barcamp at GOD’s own country - Kerala!

And typical of all things I have know with Keralites, the creativity flows… Check out the Barcamp campaign poster…. Its awesome!

The event is on the 24th of November at Trivandrum at the technopark. With 60 plus registrations the barcamp seems set just right for all the action.

The event is being put together by this passionate team… Vishnu, Pratap, Sreekanth & Raj.

I wish I could teleport myself for the day and attend the camp sipping a “Tellicherry timebomb” cocktail! If wishes were horses…

Barcamp Bangalore 2007 Winter edition - the road so far

arunram — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 22:41:39 +0000

If you haven’t heard about it yet…. here’s what you should know….

Barcamp Bangalore (BCB) is back! - it christened the 2007 Winter edition! After Barcamp Bangalore 4 (BCB4 for some), we decided that BCB ought to be regular periodic event. Something that the tech community would look forward to… to participate and share…. to meeting exciting people, talk about exciting technologies, talk about about possibilities, meet entrepreneurs and have a lot of fun!

There have been some who have been critical and other who have been happy with the going ons….

Having been associated with BCB over a few editions… we have come a long way… and some distance to go… What has kept me going is the sheer energy, passion and enthusiasm all around in the team. Each edition bring in new enthusiasts who want to give it their bit for BCB. Those who enjoyed the previous one and who want to make a difference chipping in this time…. It is this never ending energy/fuel that keep Barcamp Bangalore running… And every BCB is testimony to this passion to set aside time… take time off weekends and personal commitments… and the never say die attitude!

Each BCB has tackled new challenges…

The first BCB held at Yahoo was one of getting off the blocks and make it work… Dealing with something really new!

The second BCB at Thoughtworks had to deal with the buzz the first one had created in Blogosphere and those that wanted to get a first hand feel of the event….

Both editions had to reckon with security restrictions that the host had to put in place while they were gracious enough to allow the tech community to use their office space. At BCB2 at Thoughtworks cameras were not allowed but for a few “official” photographers. Many participants didn’t like it.

For many open and great discussions & debate, wifi, photography, live blogging and networking have become essential ingredients of Barcamps.

For many BCB1 and BCB2 still bring back great memories of the “classic” BCBs. The discussions were primarily focussed on the Internet, Web 2.0 and mobile. Many Startups demoed their fledgling products to get community feedback.

But getting a BCB off the ground meant…. fixing a venue, ensuring wifi and decent bandwidth, organising some food and finding a sponsor (s) to defray basic costs. Many of us were wondering what could be done to make things easy to get a BCB organized. Fixing a venue was the biggest problem…

BCB3 made us look for a venue and thats when the IIMB support came along and along with it went away the challenge of physical and network security restrictions. We decided to make IIMB the fixed venue for future BCBs. For BCB3, the initial thinking was to theme the focus on Social Tech - How technology impacts society. The community didn’t seem to fancy such a dramatic change in theming. This led to the re-theming of BCB3 to include Internet, Mobile and Social Tech as the three broad themes for discussion.

With BCB4 the team wondered if it would be useful to let people suggest what they wanted to talk about (themes) and interact with like minded folks pre-event (on the wiki). We called these “Collectives”. All along we were careful to not to drive any content but only suggest. The collectives took of in a manner that surprised many of us. There were 30 something collectives and they ranged from mobile, startups through bicycling! And the smaller collectives had loads of fun. We believed we had “democratized” content by allowing special interest groups to form, organize and run themselves through collectives. And we had the venue and the infrastructure issues out of the way with a standard venue. ANd by BCB4 we had a few steady and repeat sponsors in Yahoo, Thoughtworks and TCS. Sponsorship is never easy to come by but repeat sponsors were obviously coming back because sponsors were seeing value.

BCB3 and BCB4 saw the rise in scale. This was good in one way since the event was being look forward to by many and at the same time it posed the typical problems of scale - varied expectations, communication and logistics challenges. Some even felt that the overall content was dropping. We decided to organize the event every 4 months and call them the summer, monsoon and winter editions. It was felt that having periodic BCBs would build the “ongoing ecosystem” that would foster exchange of ideas, ideation and possible realization of these ideas.

BCB5 is carrying forward the things that have worked over barcamps and hopes to get the collectives approach / model work more effectively. BCB5 saw the introduction of forums in addition to the wiki to allow collectives to discuss and interact prior to the event.

By any means BCB has come long way from BCB1. With everyones support, passion and ideas we hope make it better and better. See you at BCB5. Its on the 17th and 18th of November (2007)!

Meeting with MN Vidyashankar - Karnataka’s IT secretary

arunram — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 02:35:16 +0000

It was a good two hour long meeting with the IT secretary of Karnataka M.N Vidyashankar last evening. The meeting was called for by the IT secretary to reach out to Bloggers in the city and share his vision for IT initiatives in the state and BangaloreIT.in in particular.

It was a nice gesture on his part to reach out to bloggers and take out two hours from his schedule. We had an open discussion on the various initiatives. He was very open to ideas, suggestions and critical opinion.

It was a great evening and I would make a detailed post on this soon….

PMI Bangalore celebrates a year of learning and sharing

arunram — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 08:33:36 +0000

PMI Bangalore chapter is celebrating a year of ongoing learning and sharing in Project Management practices amongst practitioners on the 18th of October, 2007. PM Footprints is our fortnightly session wherein practitioners have been meeting to share experiences, challenges and best practices in project management across industries.

We have been meeting….

Every fortnight
27 talks
18 organizations
Same place and same time
Its been one great year of learning and sharing…

To celebrate this high point of learning, we are having the PM Footprints 1st Anniversary meeting where we are inviting distinguished speakers from leading academic institutions in Bangalore. We are privileged to have the following speak at this occasion.

	Prof. S. Sadagopan, Founder Director IIIT-Bangalore
	Prof. K B Akhilesh Indian Institute of Science.
	Mr. Shankar Venkatagiri Asst. Professor IIM Bangalore

If you are in Bangalore on the18th of October and are in the profession of Project Management you should be there. For more details…. check the PMI Bangalore chapter website. You can also contact me at +91 98451 47383.

Barcamp cartoon with an Indian flavour - laugh it off!

arunram — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 14:35:54 +0000

My travels on the Internet landed me at Bosky’s. web page. Bosky sounded like a Russian name but digging further its turned out to be the nick name for Bhaskar! Bosky does started creating some nice Tech cartoons. I particularly liked this one… with a Barcamp theme…

The above Cartoon is Copyright Bosky. Please visit his webpage for more of these nice tech cartoons.

The cartoon is a take on standard Bollywood movie dialogues where the lady actor goes with the standard dramatic refrain “Nahin…” (which means No in hindi). What I really liked about the cartoon is that it is a take on the name “barcamp” an Indian twist!

The cartoon on Barcamp is probably also symptomatic of the increasing popularity of Barcamps in India and their proliferation. With India having conducted some of the larger barcamps in the world… cartoons are a great way to document the trend.

Way to go Bosky! Look forward for more and regular Cartoon nuggets from you. Tech India could do with some real creative work of this kind. It sure lightens a busy day…

Bosky, so what are you doing? We are waiting for the next one…

Slideshare.net is a good source for Project Management content

arunram — Sat, 06 Oct 2007 04:29:09 +0000

SlideShare is the world’s largest community for sharing presentations on the web. Is a popular service that has been on the internet for a year now. I am a regular user of this site for a variety of content.

I was pleasantly surprised to find some good content on Project Management. Here is a sampling of some interesting stuff I found there…

I found this one on managing schedule risk interesting…

And a whole lot more….

Slideshare is a great way to share you project management experience and also glean some good learning from other practitioners.