kinshuk sunilit aint no, dessert if therez no caek

I was away on a family trip for the last 5 days. A long pending tasks before commencing the journey was to clean my bathroom, which I finally managed to do some twenty minutes ago. While cleaning, I gained enlightenment – understood some life’s reality due to the very process of the cleaning. I share some five lessons from that enlightenment. Remember, cleaning the Toilet is an allegory to the real life here.

1. Its easy to be shitting around, but when you have to clean your own shit you start getting responsible with it.
It is very easy for anyone to spread the dirt – back-bite, bitch about, scams and spams, etc but when you have to clean your own mess you start realizing what a pain it is. End result, the next time you shit, you know how to do it in a responsible fashion so that you can do the cleaning up later and not get dirty.

2. Don’t mess up with stains that you cant clean, you will only get dirty.
OK! When you start the cleaning up remember there are some stains, some grime that you cant clean. You just don’t have the skills yet. When such is the case don’t mess with that stuff, you will only get dirty and achieve nothing. Similarly in life, you are not supposed to do everything and work at everything. Know your domain or you will be nowhere.

3. Not all grime can be cleaned by you, leave the tough ones for the experts.
Refer to point above. Not everything can be done by you. You don’t have all the skills – you are good at something but at the cost of being not-so-good at something else. Don’t waste your time and efforts doing stuff someone else can do better than you. Concentrate on what you can do best, let the rest of the stuff be tackled by specific experts.

4. If you make mistakes, some scarring will always happen.
It was never a good idea to let the dirt settle over time. When I let that happen, I make a mistake. The better approach would have been to be pro-active (being lazy doesn’t help) and run a continuous process of cleaning which wouldn’t let stains set. Now that I made the mistake, no matter what I do, I wont be able to get rid of everything. Some scars will always remain. So in life, think before you act. Watch out, before you make a mistake. For once you have committed it, there is no turning back and damage control won’t be complete. Some scarring will always happen.

5. No matter how well you clean it, it will never be 100%.
No matter how well you clean the grime, some one will be able to find faults with it. No matter how much time and effort you put into things, there will always be people who are not satisfied, who criticize. It will not do good to waste your efforts in pleasing them. It is not humanly possible to please everyone. So don’t waste your resources trying it. Learn to move on and learn to heed only to those who count. Don’t get dejected, disappointed. And next time, make a better attempt. Learn, Grow, and Evolve.

Now that the sermon is over, let me rest. Coming up next are tidbits from my recent trip and a rant on how infrastructure still sucks in India and what can be done about it.

Kinshuk

I am so tired. Its been a tough month for me. A tougher month awaits. First was OSScamp Pantnagar, then was the MozillaCamp (I will be talking about it in this post). Now, upcoming are OSScamp Delhi and OSScamp Chennai. But then, they are immense events in prospects and i do hope to get a lot of community support (unlike the previous times). It would be unfair to add that kudos to the Pantnagar student for the awesome camp they organised in their university. The only thing lacking in OSScamp Pantnagar was the absence of professionals. It was predominantly a student’s camp.

Now about the recent MozillaCamp – How and what of it. (And, I am sorry for writing this post so late)

It all began with a phone call I received from Mohak, when he introduced himself and his idea for MozillaCamp Delhi. The basic idea was that Arun and Seth were coming to India for Techkriti and GNUnify. Mohak talked with Mary Colvig at Mozilla and ensured that Arun and Seth spend a day at Delhi too. Problem was they’d be in Delhi on Tuesday the Tenth. And so started our endeavour to organise a technology unconference for working professionals on a weekday. If anything was supposed not to work, this was it.

Mohak’s first and foremost instruction to me was ‘meet me before you leave for Pantnagar’ and we worked on a number of issues related to sponsorships and venues on phone. Finally, we met for the first time at JIMS (Rithala), to scout it for a venue. In the meanwhile, I had got us our only sponsorship – from OSSCube (my company, but that doesn’t mean it was easy).

In the meanwhile, I also asked Yadu to design the visual assets for the camp and he did a splendid job. Mohak and his team of volunteers did a lot of running job to all sponsors, printers, and supporters. Mohak’s efforts on pre-event promotion paid of really well. But the event was on Tuesday and we had our doubts about the possible attendance. Registrations on the wiki were only about 150.

The biggest challenge for us was to find a venue at such a short notice. We shifted from JIMS (Rithala) to IIT Delhi to finally at Indian Social Institute.

Came Tuesday. Untill 11 only about 10 participants were on the venue. But soon, the hall was full with over 80 participants. It made a grand sight. Arun and Seth were to join us by around 2. So for the morning session, the participants were left at the mercies of me and Mohak. And we ran rampant! The morning session was a drag without any quality session and while breaking for lunch my main concern was – how many will return ?

Return they did from a not-sponsored lunch. (There was hardly any point in sponsoring it either – the venue didnt allow a caterer and their canteen sux). Then, we were joined by Seth and Arun and the rest as they say is history.

The first session was by Pascal Finette on the Concept Series by Mozilla Labs. He talked in length about what is the aim of Concept Series and how is it creatign a better Firefox and a better web. Seth, then, introduced us all to Mozilla and their efforts on Localisation. He discussed emerging issues and challenges in localisation over the web. Then the floor belonged to Arun who talked at length about the new and exciting things coming up in Mozilla Firefox 3.1, HTML 5, Video Tags, and Canvas. His sesion included a number of live demos and was very entertaining event for the non-geeks (a small section of the audeince).Soon it was 5:30pm and we had to wind up.

Mohak and I joined Arun and Seth, then, at the India Habitat Center for a short interview that I recorded for OSSCube, which basically discussed the emerging issues and challenges on the web.

You will find a lot of pictures from the event at: http://tr.im/gd3b and http://tr.im/gd3e
Videos will be uploaded soon at http://youtube.com/osscube . Keep watching that space.

The OSScamp community announces another chapter of India’s biggest unconference on open source. This time the Chennai community takes the initiative.

OSScamp Chennai March 2009 is scheduled for March 13-14, 2009 at the Chennai Trade Center. It is being organised with the OSI Tech Days 2009.

With the growing trend to open source and a higher awareness and tenacity to open source, Open Source is now a reckoning in India. In our efforts to promote Open Source Implementation and Development, we now look at Chennai to take the initiative and take us a step forward.

The alignment with OSI Tech Days will result in a confluence of Geeks and the Demi-gods of Open Source in Chennai. OSScamp Chennai will bring these together in an informal, unconference environment.The camp will thus be a great place to share stuff you have been working at, challenges that you have faced or the innovations you are making. For the newbies, it will create an immense learning opportunity as they can learn and discuss open source tools and technologies with the front runners of the same.

Details about the camp: http://chennai.osscamp.in
Sign Up for the camp: http://osscamp.in/node/147/signup (You will need an OSScamp.in Accoutn First)
Add talks for the camp: http://osscamp.in/node/add/talk
Vote on Talks: http://osscamp.in/category/talk-camp/osscamp-chennai/march-2009
Twitter: http://twitter.com/osscamp

Help us spread the word: Blog about us, Tweet about us, Write about us.
Tag your posts with osscamp or #osscamp.

Come and Participate!

My existing company business cards suck bigtime (and thankfully I am out of stock). So I need new cards, and I tok the opportunity of getting a new design altogether. So I asked my dearest friend kitty aka yadu to design em some. Unfortunately for me he is out of ideas and time, but is trying his best to help me out. He infact designed quite an unconventional business card but that needed some tweaking. Inspired by it, I picked up GiMP 2.4.5 (these days I am running Fedora 9 Live) and set about the task of designing me a card.

Ideally, a designer should work on what is a very crucial conversation starter – one’s Business Card. But the heck! I have no designer. So i have to trust my logic and my understanding of stuff that is around to do so.Below is the card I finally made. Lets call it Draft 1.

Business Card - Draft 1 (Click for Full View)

Now, I’ll attempt to discuss its features and describe why I think it is good. Feel free to contradict me at any point (don’t forget to log it as a comment).

• For some reason, I have always believed that a business card should always be minimalistic. Carry only what is essential, do away with all the crap.
• It should be different. Business Cards are very strong conversation starters. Something different, something unconventional, something uncommon are great tools to break the ice.
• It should be YOU! Its your card isn’t it? And it talks about you – who are you, how to reach you; right?
• Don’t waste the backspace. A lot of cards don’t use the backspace. True! Most Cardholders don’t show the back space, but when you hand out the card, the person will look at the back too. Dont miss a chance to create an impression.

Go on now! Sort out that itch you have; post a comment…

MozillaCamp Delhi is being organised on February 10th, 2009 at the Indian Social Institute, Lodi Road New Delhi.

MozillaCamp Delhi
http://barcamp.org/MozillaCamp
February 10th, 2009 10am to 5pm
Indian Social Institute, near Sai Baba Mandir, Lodi Road

MozillaCamp Delhi will see web developers, designers, media and students coming together to celebrate emerging web technologies, localisation, internationalisation, and standardisation of web the Mozilla way.

Highligts of the event are:

• Discussion led by Seth Bindernagel, Director of Localisation (Mozilla)
• Discussion led by Arun Ranganathan, Standards Evangelist (Mozilla)
• A Talk by Mozilla Labs on Open-Web Development (through conferencing)
• An open Hack session led by Mozilla Labs through Conferencing.
• The event will also be live streamed on Mozilla AIR.

Registerations are beign made at the Barcamp wiki (link mentioned above) and if you use any Mozilla Toolie or are a Mozilla Loyalist, you wouldn’t want to miss the event. Over 80 regsiterations have been made. We know teh event is on tuesday but since Seth and Arun will be in Delhi only on Tuesday, so we cant be flexible about it.

Mohak has been doing a lot of hard work for organising the event. I have done my best to aide him. My company (OSSCube) has gladly sponsored us and is meetign all the expenses of the camp.

Organising and Sponsorship details include:
Unorganisers (its an unconference afterall!): Mohak Prince and Kinshuk Sunil
Organising Sponsor: OSSCube (My Company, Yay!)
Organising Partners: Routeguru, Pringoo, Innobuzz, Pictualize, Innovation R&D
Online Media Partners: BlogAdda.com
Youth Media Partners: YouthV.com
SMS Channel Partners: Indyarocks
TV Media Partners: Sahara Samay, NDTV, CNBC, IBN Live
Print Media Partners: Linux For You, Indian Express

For any more details, you can contact:
Mohak Prince, +91-9868669175,+91-9811230042
mohak.prince@gmail.com
http://twitter.com/mozcampdel
Kinshuk Sunil, +91 9910024895
kinshuk@osscamp.in
http://twitter.com/kinshuksunil

Mailing List: http://groups.google.com/group/mozillacampdelhi

Graphics for the event were made by the talented Kitty aka ‘Yadu’. Check some samples. In my attempt to show them in a cool way, I ended up showing them in a weird sideline way. Have a look at them, click on the image for a full view. connect with Yadu at his blog.You can also follow him at his Twitter.

MozillaCamp Delhi Banner by Yadu

MozillaCamp Delhi Standee by Yadu

MozillaCamp Delhi Web Gfx by Yadu

MozillaCamp Delhi Poster by Yadu