Wireless Mesh in Bangalore..

As a fallout of barcamp(BCB5), I happened to get in touch with Rene, who first presented his idea of creating a wireless mesh in Bangalore. He has done this in Germany and it sounded an interesting proposition to replicate the success here. I am more interested in replicating this in rural areas in and around Bangalore, but before that I got to see it happening inside Blore.

There are several advantages of a wireless mesh network The devices which provide wireless service would themselves need lot of expensive wiring to network provides and Internet in addition to the setting up and maintenance of copper/fiber optic wiring.

Wireless mesh networks are cheap and easy to build. The single most distinguishing characteristic is the ability to self-manage (self configuring, self re-configuring, self tuning, self healing and self monitoring capabilities). Bandwidth is increased by simply expanding the mesh.

If you can build a cheap network, grow/share bandwidth, why then this has not yet become popular? One reason is that network operators and admins cannot trust a "self-everything" network.

Rene has been kind enough to create a wiki page , a Wireles mesh blore group (of which I am a member) and also kick start real wireless mesh build up exercise in Blore.... We are meeting up this weekend and I am excited to see it happening:-)))

Here is the full text white paper

Good night and good luck!!!

Day2 @ barcamp Bangalore (BCB5)

Quickly called my friends and asked them to be at the venue by 11. Reached around 11.30. Day2 is a bit more chaotic.. I decide to attend the mobile collective at L21.

First session was by Prakash, Business Development at Forum Nokia, Bangalore. I am a regular user of forum nokia, but the presentation made me realise I didn't know 40% of what was in there..its an excellent platform for developers. He spoke of Mosh, business models, operators, billing models etc. I found the "Try for free catalog" very interesting. Developers could partner with Nokia and get their application on "Try for free", an application which resides on Nokia mobile phones. Any end user can try this developer app and the developer gets the revenue. Real cool idea. Some interesting discussions on tapping the power of wide distribution channel that Nokia has in India...

The second one was on "Mobile Internet market" by Lalit Bhise, CEO of startup mobisy . We had a very interesting discussion on mobile internet applications, usage, technology, different market segments etc.. Rajan (Mobile Monday Bangalore) has promised to blog the proceedings at momo , so I will not write more here. Learnt a lot from this session.

The next session after lunch was at L11, Python collective. As we were waiting for this, some music enthusiasts started playing electric guitar..good English numbers -Floyd et al..and were trying to mash up a theme song for barcamp!!!....(see snaps)

In the python collective, we discussed on Web frameworks for python (WebPI etc), dynamic tracing etc..Had some good demos. Around 30 python geeks were gathered in the classroom and I just let the antenna above my head transmit everything above:-)))

Then I decided to join in for a lighter collective at D2.. "Education and IT"..We discussed on the education gaps in colleges, role of faculty, on missing feedback system that would be take back failure lessons from industry to classrooms (like the failure of Corba..it is still taught in classrooms as a great platform for interoperability).

Time for the BCB5 Quiz.. other sessions on, but can't miss a quiz..so I join in with Kannan (until then we had been in different collectives, different rooms, finally we had a common interest;-). There were 7 rounds.. It was not just a normal quiz, for every question we also shared as much as info as possible.. we were around 15 ppl in the room, so its was pretty informal and informative.. some questions.. what is the chip used in OLPC? In the movie Transformers what are the good robots called? Who is the Indian in the Nokia board of directors? What is the full form of WiMax? what is the markup language used for facebook? when was the first barcamp in Bangalore started? What is the currency used on second life? What is the top level domain for mobile applications? etc...
Quiz is over and I pull Kannan and ask him to call it a day! On the whole a gr8 weekend:-)

Thanks to everyone at BCB5 (barcamp bangalore) for this experience!!!

Snaps(slide show) of day2 here.......

Flash Slideshow

barcamp bangalore (BCB5)- The Winter Edition - Day1

Its day one at BarCamp - the fifth edition....I enter the registration area with my husband Kannan(who never registers online!!) and find some cool logos and badges..I decide to sport "I am barcamped!", "Barcamp 5 Chilled Out!", "Mobile Collective" and ofcourse "I am speaking!".

Attended some interesting sessions.. The first session I attended was in room L12. The session was given by 2 guys from Headstart, an initiative floated this year in June, primarily to help startups. Instead of approaching VC's, the startup company can approach this group which comprises of review panelists from different companies and different domains..

The second session in this room was given by yours truly ;-).. I talked about the importance of webvideo and gave a live demo on my mobile. Big thanks to Bhuvan(Nokia), Navjot(Opera, GuruGeeks), and Ashwin(he sports a badge with title Cruise Maniac) for helping me out with setup for the presentation and for all the participants for the lively discussion.

Navjot gave a presentation on GuruGeeks.inspired by the spirit of barcamp, he wants to create a developer community..He says his website will be up and running by Monday and also demonstrates a stubborn resolve to do whatever it takes to get GuruGeeks up and going.. I am tracking GuruGeeks

Rene. an East German gave a presentation on how broadband can be shared between neighbours through wireless mesh..

Evening was total fun... At D5, beds and mats were spread for the collective "Generic girls, generic boys" - started off by Nishant!!!. It was essentially abt the myths each gender had on each other..my husband and I thoroughly enjoyed this session.. An interesting fact was that there were around 40 guys and 3-4 girls!!! Talk of gender equality!!!

Its past 6pm, we are abt to leave..but again we hit an interesting discussion near the registration area.. Nishant from Goldman Sachs' trading arm had some extremely interesting anecdotes on some company HR policies.....extremely interesting views...those who were there know what I mean ;-) - Shourya, Swaminathan, Vibhash!!!!
Nishant- have a great time ahead

Snaps(slide show) of day1 here.......

Flash Slideshow

Think twice - Another day in paradise

Here is the lyrics of my all-time favourite song sung by Phil Collins. How many times would I have passed such a person...Too good a song..very touching...Thanks Phil:-)

Listen to the song here...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftlYLcEW_I4

Here goes the lyrics..
------------------------
She calls out to the man on the street
sir, can you help me?
Its cold and Ive nowhere to sleep,
Is there somewhere you can tell me?

He walks on, doesnt look back
He pretends he cant hear her
Starts to whistle as he crosses the street
Seems embarrassed to be there

Oh think twice, its another day for
You and me in paradise
Oh think twice, its just another day for you,
You and me in paradise

She calls out to the man on the street
He can see shes been crying
Shes got blisters on the soles of her feet
Cant walk but shes trying

Oh think twice...

Oh lord, is there nothing more anybody can do
Oh lord, there must be something you can say

You can tell from the lines on her face
You can see that shes been there
Probably been moved on from every place
cos she didnt fit in there

Oh think twice...