Inviting all Techies, Entrepreneurs, Students from all over for PHPCamp 2010

Last year, PHPCamp 08 was seen as India's Biggest unconference. This year, it promises to be even bigger, better. Pune has PHPCamp 2010 this weekend (9th Jan, Saturday @ SCDL, Model Colony, Pune). This also happens to be the first event of the year.



There have been many questions asked on Facebook, Twitter, PHPCamp blogs on why you should be attending PHPCamp, who can be a part of it, what's so special this year? Thought of spending a minute with this blog entry, and clearing these doubts.

What is PHP?

PHP is a general-purpose scripting language that was originally designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages.

What is PHPCamp?

It's a Barcamp, with a focus towards PHP Technology.

So, will it just be PHP?

No, anything and everything that's related to PHP, it could be as simple as "Building a website in 30 mins with Joomla (CMS)" or "Integrating PHP with Adobe Flex or Microsoft Silverlight (UI technologies)" to "Opensource Application Platform like Shindig / Opensocial" . You can always browse through what interests people at PHPCamp

Do I need to know PHP or can i survive with the bare minimum of knowledge i have on this topic?

Students with minimum programming experience, should start dabbling with PHP asap, try setting up with server, running hello world scripts, understanding the notion of web-development, and reading lots of "How to" article on the net (PHPCamp.net is a very good resource that caters to everyone, no matter if he/she is an expert/novice/beginner).

For people with prior experience, i suppose just the basics should suffice or follow the Getting Started Manual.

I am a student, understand PHP, what type of question's should i ask?

Ask the right question to get the right answer as each talk is scheduled for just 40 mins. Contact the speaker after his/her session get's over, clear all your doubts. Don't be shy on asking questions, don't compromise on them, who knows many in the audience might be having the same doubt.

What can i expect out of PHPCamp?

Come with an attitude that helps you to become an expert, 8 hours of knowledge from the expert's could really do wonder's. As a student, you might just get an internship offer, decide which technology to be a master in, lot of "Getting started with examples". You could sound as an expert in your friend circle, by discussing various technologies you pick up here.



For professionals clear your doubts with questions that always bother you, "How can i achieve this?", "Where can i get some pointers on this topic?", "What's the best way to tackle a business problem?", "How can i design an application, considering the 3 layers (service, view, backend)?", "Have a startup idea and want to discuss with the experts?" You will find people from all corner's. As Navin says, "Humans are better than Google". We have experts from Adobe, Microsoft, Xento (Our Diamond Sponsors)

The most important, why not suggest a topic that you would want to present/discuss at PHPCamp, a great source of "Gyan" and be a part of "Share & Learn" process.


How can i do my bit for PHPCamp?

We need friends to help us un-organize PHPCamp. Join us at the volunteer's meet on 8th Jan(3.30PM) at SICSR. Looking forward to meet you all here.

If you can't meet us on this day, Blog/Facebooking/Twittering/Digg/Scrap(Orkut) about it and send us a DM on Twitter, we will include your blog entry in our mediasection.

I want to attend PHPCamp, Can I get all the details?

Date: 9th Jan 2010
Venue: SCDL(Symbiosis Center for Distance Learning), Pune
Time: 9AM -6PM ( come 15 mins. prior to the start)
Map to the venue
Register ( Just join us if you see the event is a sellout, we have already extended 300 ticket, as per the current status even that is almost a sellout yet again )

This blog entry was very much inspired from Navin's article on Why students should bunk classes to attend BarcampPune: projects, internships, recosBarcamp?. Thanks Navin.

Woohoo!! I am now a Adobe Community Champion

Last week i received a mail from Adobe Team, the subject line read "Welcome Priyank Kapadia to the India Community Champions group", Woohoo!! All elated to be part of this.

Thanks to John Koch and Adobe for considering me. It is really a great honor to be a part of Adobe Community Champions.

“Community champions receive community recognition, access to Flex product pre-release information, speaking opportunities in some Adobe sponsored events, access to Adobe resources (i.e., presentation slides, champion web portal, champion forums, etc.) and some funding available for approved events”.

To know more about this program please follow this link

We are Back with a Bang!! - BlogCamp Pune

Yes, Yes, Yes!!! The makers of BlogCamp Pune are back with a bang. With rain, comes two awesome events that Pune was always waiting for - BlogCamp & BarCamp (date yet to be announced). The discussion thread for BlogCamp reached 150+ mails with around 20 bloggers including everyone from a beginner to a Pro from the Blogging world. I personally have been out of action for quite some time, with BlogCamp i see an opportunity to meet the bloggers, and just share some views/thoughts about Blogging - What's ethical and what's not?



Things that have been discussed at Blogger's meet,
1. Plagiarism - No one likes that.
2. SEO - this is the most talked about topic( seen @ Mumbai BlogCamp )
3. Do you blog to earn? - This is again quite debatable.
4. Basics of Blogging? - Always nice to have a "starter pack"
5. Google Ranks, Analytics and how to assist yourself track your visitors.
6. WordPress blogs vs. Blogspot ??

And the list is endless ... You just don't wanna miss this.. "NEW" Edition of Blog
Camp Pune (BlogCamp Pune 2)! Bigger, Better, Action Packed !!!

Follow us on Twitter (@blogcamppune), we tag all our tweets with #blogcamppune2 hashtag!!

Venue

SICSR(Symbiosis Institute of Computer Studies & Research)
Model Colony, Pune
India

Google Maps



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Flex Boot Camp in Pune

Its been my pleasure to announce Pune Boot Camp 2009 (Sponsored by Adobe), going to held up in Maharashtra Institute of Technology, Kothrud on 13 & 14th MArch 2009.

Be geared up for all kind of FLASHy.. FLEXy… presentations which
gonna rock Pune AIR. :)

Its and Adobe event and all key evangelists are expected to join us. So be a part of this huge success. Raghunath Rao, Adobe Technical Evangelist has confirmed about his visit today. Sujit Reddy, Adobe Technical Evangelist is also expected to visit.

Venue:
Maharashtra Institute of Technology (MIT)
S.No.124, Paud Road, Kothrud,
Pune 411038
Maharashtra INDIA

Maps:

View Larger Map
Note: We need active volunteers for this event.

Pune Boot Camp is free and community-run event for everyone interested in the Adobe Technologies. No matter you’re just a newbie with Flex/Flash AIR or you’re a scholar ,Boot Camp assures something to learn.

There are some of the most experienced Gurus who will share their knowledge on everything related to RIA space including, Flash Catalyst, AIR, FLex and OpenSource development.

Dont miss this opportunity to hear from the leaders. I will update more soon on this. .

Speakers:

* Raghunath Rao (Adobe Technical Evangelist)
* Sujit Reddy G. (Adobe Technical Evangelist)
* and many more…

Pune, the Silcon Valley of India

I am back to blogging it's been quite sometime that I haven't blogged on anything although was an active micro-blogger, but nothing on my blog.

Pune is the "Geek Town" of India, I certainly believe that Pune is becoming the most active city in India. I recently moved out of Pune (a post on that later).

Post PHPCamp, which was declared to be the biggest un-conference, which saw people across different platform talk about PHP and related technologies gave birth to PHPCamp.net, fabulous initiative taken by Amit Singh. Must visit.

With this, we also saw a rise in # of people talk about "Open Social" platform and how to build application on these using the OpenSocial API. It all got culminated with a semi unconference which was named OpenSocial Developer Garage.

How can we miss the DrupalCamp? Saw around 300+ people turning up for the 2nd DrupalCamp conference in India.

I must say "Geek Town" is indeed buzzing big time.By the way you can follow me on twitter @whereispriyank

Open Social Developer Garage, Hit!

The most awaited semi-barcamp conference "Open Social Developer Garage", and the first of its kind in India was very well appreciated.

Quick recap!

All the volunteers and unorganizers reached the awesome venue(Thoughtworks Pune) at around 8.30AM, everyone having their own plans ready to make this event a huge hit. We quickly got things set up (Registration, Code Lab, Venue), and by 9.30 we had already seen 40+ turning up to "Gain" or "Share" what Open Social is all about?



Even before the campers, most of the Speakers were at the venue raring to talk about different aspects of Open Social .

We started the event at 10.30AM with the same old BarCamp style of introducing yourself in 3 words, as it began we had everyone twittering live about ODGPune specially Pune Tech Live and DevGarage.

As a token of appreciation, the unorganizers decided to give out "Bamboo Shoots" to all the speakers, and finally three cheers (HIP HIP HURRAY!!!) to ODGPune, it was indeed an awesome event, we have whole bunch of things in pipeline and look forward to implement them in the coming years. Just to keep everyone updated, we will start planning for ODGPune 09 very soon, Suggest everyone to join our Google Group where all the action begins.

How can we make it better?

1. Sadly most of the unorgnanizers and volunteers were really busy with their schedule and we were fighting with time to get this concept out and popularize it "BIG TIME", so i believe Better Planning.
2. Make it Open For All
3. Community Driven, not just restricted to 4-5 folks in the city, we would want everyone to join us and take this to a newer level. With a good community for Open Social, we can have the community drive this event.


Where can i see the action?

We will have the pics uploaded on Flickr. All pics for Open Social Developer Garage have been tagged by "odgpune".

Already have people blogging about Open Social Developer Garage, Pune


Aparana Kumar from Sun writes "Social networks in India have gained a new high since early 2007. The culture of the region, diversity, affinity for communities & a nation wide culture where businesses thrive on connections/references/word-of-mouth, very neatly align with what social networks have to offer."

Who all were behind it?

1. Rohan Dighe
2. Amit Singh
3. Vishal Gadkari
4. Pravin Nirmal

and obviously Priyank Kapadia

Now the "BIG" folks who helped us a lot

1. Bhavya
2. Vipul
3. Tara
4. Abhishek Nagar
5. Aman


More to follow in another post? The Making of Open Social Developer Garage ....

Open Social Developer at Thoughtworks on 20th December

Yes, the wait for the most awaited conference is over. Open Social Developer Garage will start tomorrow( 20th December 2008) morning, and things have already been finalized. Speaker, volunteers, un-organizers all rearing to go, and the aura is nothing less than fantabulous. ODGPune is what everyone is talking about? For many, including me this arena( Open Social App) is completely new.



For all those newbies in Open Social, why not just scan through this Frequently Asked Questions about Open Social.

Some more FAQ's

1. What is Open Social Developer Garage?
2. We are twittering!
3. How Do I register for the event?

No on the spot registration accepted, it's an invite only event. If you still haven't registered and are interested, either twit us or send us a mail.

First Open Social Coffee Meet in Pune

On Saturday, 27th September 2008 we had the first ever Open Social Coffee meet at ICC Level 9. There were around 10 of us for the meet and the agenda was to discuss what's next after PHPCamp?

The MOM,

1. We are having a Open Social Developer Garage'08 conference in Pune on 20th September, it is "invite only" conference.
2. CMS Day followed this, somewhere in February.
3. A surprise for all Joomla guys followed that in April.

Met Rohan Dighe, Amit Karpe, Prasoon Kumar, Shardul Mohite, Rakshit, Pravin, Amit Kumar Singh, Vishal Gadkari ,and i am missing out on few names here. The plan of this meet was to discuss some of key points of Open Social Developer Garage'08, how will it be organized and what all things need to be targeted?



How can you be a part of this conference? Help us out with unorganizing/unvolunteering or be a speaker or a contributor to the Open Social Developer Garage. Some of the things that we are having for this conference are

1. CodeLabs, Open Social Geeks develop a prototype.
2. Expect 'Top Notch' speakers from the Open Social community.

PHPCamp is India's Biggest Un-conference

21st September 2008, the weather prediction where, "Heavy rains" expected and so was the crowd at the first in its kind, PHPCamp. With over 700+ Campers, 4 Un-Organizers, and Over 200+ volunteers, PHPCamp was proud to say that "PHPCamp, the biggest un-conference in India". Can anyone debate on that?

The only sad thing that could have happened is one of the unorganizers missing out on PHPCamp, and I was the unlucky one to miss out.

How it all Started?

12th July (Saturday), I was with Amit Singh. We said let's do something in Pune, as we had not announced BarCamp Pune 5 then. Amit says, "BarCamp Pune has always seen a rise in no of speakers on Java related technologies, there is hardly anything with respect to PHP", and that was it. Both of us simultaneously said, " Let's do a PHPCamp, unconference targeting PHP geeks in India"

1 week later

We have PHPCamp created, and we start announcing the date for PHPCamp.

We were looking out for a venue, what better than Persistent, I told Vinod Kulkarni (Associate Vice-President from Persistent) about PHPCamp, and he found this idea interesting ( so did many in our circle). We had our venue decided, it was Persistent Systems

Early days, the camper's count was somewhere around 40. We were expecting around 300 camper's to be at the PHPCamp. But future of PHPCamp was decided the moment it was announced.

Within few days of announcing PHPCamp, we got our first Sponsor, Cogent Technologies, and followed that we gotPune IT Labs, and 01Synergy . Even DirectI was keen on sponsoring PHPCamp, by then it was too late. At DirectI the concept of Un-conference is liked by everyone.


First signs of Success

Thanks to Mr.Devidas Deshpande from Pune Mirror, he wrote a news article ("Camping to Connect"), which was purely targeting PHP and the concept behind PHPCamp. Those were the days when the count was somewhere around 350- 400.

2 Weeks before the D-Day

The Camper's count shoots to 600+. Volunteers Count shoots to 130+, PHPCamp, creating ripples across the country and abroad. Everyone had something to share on the PHPCamp Google Group. Everyone was excited about PHPCamp, thanks to the blogger's community in India, everyone had the "I am attending PHPCamp" tag on their blog.

D-Day

Camper's Count was 1170 (Expecting 50% turn out as this was un-conference and not a conference). We had 8 volunteers from Symbiosis (SICSR), Varun Arora, Tarun, Nishant, Rashmi, Smriti, and 3 others. I was not in Pune, I had some Training to attend. With so many people gathering, Tarun Chandel and Rohit Srivastava started the camp in their own style ("Tashan Mein"), they introduced everyone to the concept of what un-conference is like and nitty-gritty of it. We always wanted everyone to enjoy every bit of PHPCamp. I call Amit Singh at around 3 PM, and first thing he has to say, "Man you are missing out on the fun, we have broken all the records".

What Happened at the Camp?

Sadly, I had missed the show, you can get updates from the following blogs ( there are around 140+ people blogging about PHPCamp).

Amit Singh
Tarun Chandel


Next year it would be even bigger and the noise would be unbearable, let's say "PHPCamp Rocked".

Glimpse of Swype

50 Words a min on Touch Screen, it's amazing! That's Swype for you!
Swype, is quite simple to use, although beneath the user interface there's a lot going on.

"Swype works with an on-screen QWERTY keyboard like you have on the tablet version of Windows and on the iPhone. But instead of tapping letters out, you press your finger or stylus on the first letter, then, without lifting it, move it to the remaining letters in the word. When the word is done, then you lift."

Even on tiny smartphone keyboards, it is intuitive and fast.A built-in 65,000-word dictionary corrects obvious and even creative spelling errors.

I do agree with Kushler (Inventor of T9, Swype) that his technology would improve the iPhone experience. Enjoy this demonstration from Kushler. I want this badly, it's awesome!


Video 1: Swype Demonstation Video

Using Adobe Flex with Netbeans 6.1

A Netbeans' plugin is released to support Flex SDK. Look at Sourceforge (FlexBean) . It was noted at NetBeans day that NetBeans 6.1 IDE will be more oriented to AJAX and Web 2.0 application development. To see the list of features, NetBeans 6.1 IDE

PHPCamp featured on Pune Mirror

Amazing day it was! For the first ever PHPCamp in India, we getting appreciated by everyone, but the most important thing needs to be mentioned is, people are excited about PHPCamp and the quality is on the rise. Great news for PHP folks ( I am not a PHP guy, but loving it post Joomla 1.5, and Moodle).

Here is that article that got featured on Pune Mirror on 3rd September'08, Thursday

BarCamp Pune is back

Barcamp Pune is back with the 5th Edition of Barcamp in Pune.
Date: 25th October 2008 (Saturday)

Keep an eye on our wiki while we set the preparations in motion.

You can follow us on Twitter too and FriendFeed

iPhone 3G Launched in India

A great mobile internet
device—probably the best ever made—and it’s a pity that
it’s debuted in the country before 3G networks are up and running.


The pity, of course, is that the two Indian operators whom Apple has
chosen—Airtel and Vodafone—have both decided not to subsidise the
handset as AT&T , for instance, does in the US, where it retails at $200
(approx Rs 8,600) with a compulsory extra charge by the operator for a two-year
usage plan. At a whopping Rs 36,100 for the 16GB (which comes in black and white
rear panels) and Rs 31,000 for the 8GB model. The phones are being given on first come
first serve basis.


Had it been priced between 20-25K, the number's would speak for itself, knowing that Apple is targetting the Indian SmartPhone market.

Recent Survey done by TimesOfIndia on Who would want to purchase an iPhone priced at 31K?, the result are even more whooping. 90% Say No, 7% Say they would still buy it, Remaining are still unsure.

In short 93% of the public won't be interesting in buying iPhone? I would place myself in the unsure category. You can get HTC Diamond for a cheaper price than iPhone.

Building ASDoc with Maven-Flex Plugin

Problem: Building ASDoc with Maven

Solution: Paste the following <plugin> information under the <plugins> </plugins> section of your pom.xml

<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-antrun-plugin</artifactId>
<executions>
<execution>
<id>generate-asdoc</id>
<phase>package</phase>
<configuration>
<tasks>
<echo>Generating asDoc documentation</echo>
<mkdir dir="${basedir}/target/apiDocs" />
<property file="${basedir}/src/main/asDoc/asdoc.properties" />
<exec executable="${flex.home}/bin/asdoc.exe" failonerror="false" >
<arg line="-doc-sources '${srcdoc}'" />
<arg line="-library-path+='${flex.home}/frameworks/libs'"/>
<arg line="-main-title '${main.title}'" />
<arg line="-window-title '${window.title}'" />
<arg line="-output '${output.dir}'" />
<arg line="-footer ${footer}" />
<arg line="-left-frameset-width ${leftFramesetWidth}" />
<arg line="-source-path '${srcdoc}'" />
<!-- If you are using any external libraries such as Cairngorm.swc or flexlibs.swc then you need to specify them in this manner -->
<!-- <arg line="-external-library-path '${flexlib}'" />
<arg line="-external-library-path+='${cairngorm}'" /> -->
</exec>
</tasks>
</configuration>
<goals>
<goal>run</goal>
</goals>
</execution>
</executions>
</plugin>

It took me 20 mins to get this done, for you it should take 2 mins. If this helps you let me know.

AsDoc.properties file contains the following

srcdoc ='${basedir}/src'
main.title = Priyank Examples
window.title = Priyank Examples
output.dir ='${basedir}/target/apiDocs'
footer ="© 2008 Priyank Examples"
leftFramesetWidth="200"
flexlib="${basedir}/src/main/swc/flexlib.swc"
cairngorm="${basedir}/src/main/swc/cairngorm.swc"

Building a swc using a net.israfil.mojo plugin with resource bundle

This one was pending for long now. Many of my friends has this issue prop up everytime they had resource bundle in their project.

Problem Statement: Get 'Error: resource bundle not found <resoucebundlename>.<properties>' when doing a build with the pom.xml. Building a swc using a net.israfil.mojo plugin.

Solution: Just copy paste the following xml into your pom. Ensure that you have useNetwork=false set as at times it does not refer to local file system if you don't have this attribute set to false.


<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/maven-v4_0_0.xsd">
<modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
<groupId>com.priyank.samples.mx.ascomponent</groupId>
<artifactId>ascomponent</artifactId>
<version>1.0</version>
<name>ascomponent</name>
<packaging>swc</packaging>
<properties>
<flex.home>${env.FLEX_HOME}</flex.home>
<flex.compiler.source>src</flex.compiler.source>
<flex.priyank.locale>en_US</flex.priyank.locale>
</properties>
<build>
<finalName>ascomponent</finalName>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<groupId>net.israfil.mojo</groupId>
<artifactId>maven-flex2-plugin</artifactId>
<version>1.0</version>
<extensions>true</extensions>
<configuration>
<flexHome>${flex.home}</flexHome>
<useNetwork>false</useNetwork>
<extraParameters>
<parameter>
<name>source-path+=${basedir}/src/main/locale/$
{flex.priyank.locale}</name>
</parameter>
</extraParameters>
</configuration>
</plugin>
</plugins>
<outputDirectory>build</outputDirectory>
</build>
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>com.adobe</groupId>
<artifactId>cairngorm</artifactId>
<version>2.2.1</version>
<type>swc</type>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
</project>

This should generate an SWC artifact under the target directory. The typical developer shrug, "It works on my machine" is not applicable here.

Adobe Flex 3 vs. Silverlight

I wanted to do a comparison of the features in Flex 3 vs. those in Silverlight, came across a wonderful article by Serge Jesper.

For those who just need the summary

Silverlight has support for playing with the HTML DOM and JavaScript, one Good part of it.

Bad and ugly you might have to read his article.

Microsoft running their apps on Flash and not SilverLight

"Mojave Experiment". I have read blogs that complain a whole about Vista. I believe that Linux is still gung-ho in terms of performance. The only thing i see with vista is not many people are using it and still writing about it. I personally haven't touched vista yet, would love to get a licensed copy some day and start working on it.

Microsoft has come up with a new OS called Windows Mojave? Is it? Really?Not Again? Find it out

Microsoft Surface, It's all Hands On.

Microsoft Surface (Codename: Milan), is a Multi-touch product from Microsoft which is developed as a software and hardware combination technology that allows a user, or multiple users, to manipulate digital content by the use of natural motions, hand gestures, or physical objects.

YouTube video shows its potential. Is this where Microsoft is thinking of making a shift? Probably they want to be ahead in the Race of UI. Microsoft calls this biggest shift in computing.

Play in the water without getting wet! Hmmm.

A small demo of the application and where it is actually being used. If you are shocked, please share your comments here.

Google to buy Digg

Search giant Google is close to acquiring US-based social news aggregator Digg for around US$200 million, according to a report on US technology blog TechCrunch.

"The companies are now in final negotiations according to our sources,
although it could be a couple of weeks before it closes," the site wrote this morning,
adding Digg would be brought into the search giant under its Google
News property. However, the deal could still fall through, or another
party — such as Microsoft — could step in.

Digg was launched in November 2004 by a number of youthful
entrepreneurs in the US, with the most high-profile of those being
Kevin Rose and Digg's current chief executive Jay Adelson.

The site is one of the best-known internet content and social news
aggregators, and has a number of competitors such as Slashdot and
Reddit. It has a substantial advertising deal with Microsoft and a
loyal user community who contribute heavily to the site.