Technology through Music

I don't know where to start as i write this post after long time.

All it started with a official mail which said "Barcamp Bangalore 12" hosted at SAP Labs India. Barcamp Bangalore is an "Unconference", where people around bangalore meetup at one place to share their ideas and knowledge in form of presentations or as a demo.

Being an enthusiastic technologist and that too, the event being hosted in SAP where i work,my heart said to go for it. Yes, i immediately drafted a mail to the co-ordinators of the event at SAP sending my nomination as a speaker. I decided to talk on InMemory Database as i already created a slide deck for my team as part of the IIC session(Insane Innovators Club) founded by me.

Next thing i did immediately is registering myself and posted an overview of my session in the Barcamp Bangalore portal with a fear in mind on how many participants will be attending my session.

To my surprise, in couple of hours my session got the first hit, where a Database expert registered for my session. And next day i could see more than 25 participants registered and on the day before the event, a total of 89 participants registered for my session in the portal, which is very decent number compared to other sessions.This is not a comparison, i am trying to explain the fact that its purely based on the participants, they can attend the sessions of their interests.

So, the event is on next day.Since I am pretty confident of what i am going to talk and already the slide deck was there with me, i didnt put much effort on preparing for the presentation until the day before the event.

I don't know why, but always i try to be different from others let it be a presentation or the views on any other topic. And that too these days, i became stubborn enough to just follow my heart no matter what others say.The same thing happened here for this presentation too.

I sat and started thinking from 10 pm, a day before the event on how am i going to present. Only 45 minutes if the time given to me, so i should not bore the participants by talking rubbish theory stuff. Yes, there came an idea of why not running through the slide deck(70 slides) for 10 minutes with an interval of 8 seconds per slide with a background music in my BOSE SoundDock Portable system using my APPLE IPod Touch. Yeah, i imagined myself how good it will be and my mind accepted the same. Then came, what to play. First thing came to my mind was 'Nothing Else Matters' but the track will run only for 6 minutes but the slide deck is for 10 minutes.

Then came the beautiful idea of playing some instrumental in the background and the one and only choice without much thinking is Music Director Ilayaraaja's instrumental.I chosen two instrumental songs of him namely 'Ilaya Nila Pozhigirathu' and 'Ilamai yenum Poongatru'.

So all my preparation came to an end and by that time it was 3 AM on the event day. I went to bed waiting badly for the sun to shine.

That was the event day and i was all set with my Laptop bag, Apple IPod and Bose SoudDock heading towards to SAP Labs. I registered myself again at the event and also my session and then got introduced to few friends there at the event.

The event started at 9 AM with an introduction to Barcamp by the organizing commitee and finally the electronic schedule of sessions was displayed. My session was scheduled from 02:30 PM to 03:15 PM.

So, i made myself free to attend other sessions with LINUX 101 session being my first one. Wow, i cannot stop myself from appreciating this idea of Barcamp. I went in and a person is talking about Linux to which am a amateur.

I installed the VirtualBox and over that Linux Ubundo OS and tried my hands with the same all in a matter of 30 to 40 minutes.That was an Awesome experience!

Then attended a non-techie session 'Ancient methodologies to the corporate world'. Though i am not convinced with many of the points made by the speaker, it was a good awareness session which is very much required in this confusing corporate world.

Had a usual lunch in SAP and witnessed a new event called 'Techlash' where people having different ideas came and showcase the same in 5 minutes.

Then i was all set for my session and i must say it was houseful with the room occupying around 50 to 60 participants with few sitting in the floor to listen to the craps i am going to say :)

I just went in and in couple of minutes made sure my laptop and speaker is ready to project and play what i planned for and the next 10 minutes, i left the audience with the mellifluous Ilayaraja instrumental music and the Picture Slide deck giving overview about INMEMORY Database.

I know how they would have enjoyed it as i do experienced it well before the event.

And then i started explaining the stuff with the little knowledge i had and as the goal set to myself, i created the awareness about INMEMORY Database among those who are new to this topic and also got a good feedback from the participants.

Again, attended one more session on open source web development tool called 'JOOMLA' and left the venue with a goodie(Laptop backpack).

To summarize, i enjoyed and had fun as a speaker at Barcamp Bangalore 12. Got an confidence that the world is ready to listen to you if you do something different.

Never mind others opinion on how good/bad you are doing at something. Just listen to your heart what it says and follow it!

And the below human being is one of the two inspiration's for my session.

'Nanban' da...

I went to watch the tamil film 'Nanban' a remake of the hindi film '3 Idiots' based on the Chetan Bhagat's novel 'Five Point Someone'.

There is some kind of connectivity between this film and me, reason being that was the first english novel i ever read in my life.I can smell the smoke....It's not my mistake.The environment around me in schools, colleges and in my town never taught/told me to read novels.

One of the many good things i learnt after moving to bangalore from chennai is reading habit,Till then, only the academic books were known to me.

Back to the topic, to those who never read the novel 'Five Point Someone', let me give you a brief idea on the plot of the novel. The plot of the novel is on few students'friends of IIT(Indian Institute of Technology) who were the engineering graduates dying hard to score that cgpa border of 5 point something (someone).

The moral of the story was that the education system in India is still expecting the
students to score some good marks but it is not concentrating on the real purpose of the education which is encouraging the students to pursue the career of their interest.

With this plot, novel went on defining the day-2-day life of 3 students specially who were also thick friends.I really loved the novel reason being i was eager to know whats the next scene in the novel everyday once am back from novel. Good work by Chetan Bhagat.

Later in 2009, bollywood film '3 Idiots' was released directed by Rajkumar Hirani starring Aamir Khan. The film was based on the novel 'Five point someone' and the credits were also given to the author.

Aamir Khan performed his best in the ace role portraying the hero of the novel.
All the time, there was a dialogue 'All is Well' injecting the postive thought among other characters and also the audience. I have also watched this film. One of the very few hindi films i have ever watched.

After saying that, today is the day i watched the remake of '3 Idiots' in tamil with the name 'Nanban' meaning 'Friend' directed by ace director Shankar starring Vijay, Jiva and Srikanth.Believe me, Shankar is the director who wont complete the film until he shoots atleast a small scene in foreign countries.But to the surprise this film is shooted only in 'Tamilnadu' nowhere else.

The story line was the same and the screenplay also mostly fits the original '3 Idiots' except for the duration of the film which is little lengthy.
Such kind of films is also very much of required in tamil nadu to boost the motivation of the young generation.

Whether it is a '3 Idiots' or 'Nanban', the root is 'Five Point Someone' by C.Bhagat.
Hats off to him for writing such a novel which have made many students to pursue the career of their interest, LISTENING TO THEIR HEART and not to their mind.