All Posts in Unconference

|In: Embedded|Last Updated:

IntelLogo

Intel India hosted its first ever two-day “Intel India Innovation Conclave” in Bengaluru to reiterate its commitment towards accelerating innovation in the country and as part of its valedictory session announced the winners of the Intel India Embedded Challenge 2014 [Intel IEC 2014]

Key Highlights

  • 4th Intel India Embedded Challenge completed
  • 2400 registrations received, 650 innovative ideas shortlisted and 40 prototypes displayed at Intel India Innovation Conclave
  • Intel IEC finalists mentored by over 50 technologists from Intel India
  • Introduced “IoT devices & Intelligent Systems” as a new category; other categories include “Smart Solutions for Social Causes” & “Wearable Computing”.

The Intel India Innovation Conclave offers a collaborative platform to enhance synergy amongst Government policy makers, academia and industry; to share knowledge and promote innovation which is a key imperative to foster national competitiveness & growth. This year’s conclave included discussions and deliberations on the importance of innovation and its role in nation building.

The Intel IEC 2014, set within the framework of the Conclave helped stimulate an environment of exciting innovation as it showcased 40 new ideas from young innovators through prototype demos displayed over two days. These projects have potential to evolve into useful business models in the near future.

The focus of Intel India Embedded Challenge is on designing embedded solutions around a wide range of application areas.  As a part of the Intel Higher Education Program, this competition enables and mentors young innovations to scale up their level of thinking and creativity. Moreover, Intel IEC offers a strong mentorship platform where Intel technologists volunteer their time and expertise to mentor each team to develop and prototype their innovation using hardware platforms provided by Intel. The participants in this contest get to architect, design and develop novel embedded applications in areas such as – Consumer Electronics, Digital Security Surveillance, Medical, Education, Storage and In-Vehicle Infotainment amongst others.

A special jury comprising of Intel executives, Government representatives and academia shortlisted 6 best projects out of the 40 prototypes at display. These 40 working models were selected from 650 innovative ideas submitted by students and working professionals from across India. Intel IEC awards cash prizes of INR 15,00,000 to the winners, including two Grand Prizes of INR 5,00,000 each and a Jury Popular Choice Award and a Woman Innovator of the Year Award.

The winners of the Intel India Embedded Challenge 2014 are [Click on image to enlarge]

Intel_Awards

The winners of Intel IEC 2014 were chosen on the basis of achieving the engineering goals, clarity and lateral thinking, project viability and the success of their prototype. The Contest showcased a range of exciting project ideas, designed and developed on the Intel Atom & Intel Galileo platforms across multiple application areas.

Speaking on the occasion Ms. Kumud Srinivasan, President, Intel India said

Intel India is committed towards advancing innovation & entrepreneurship, accelerating digital access and empowering communities in the country. The Intel India Innovation Conclave further reinforces that commitment. And it was truly gratifying to see the key collaborators in this journey come together through this novel platform and collaborating on this endeavor. We are very excited to see a wide display of bright innovations from young engineering students and professionals at this event.  A platform like this truly celebrates the spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship; I congratulate the winners and the participants for their exemplary contributions.

Since 2010, the Contest has reached out to over 12000 young engineering students & professionals, over 2000 innovation proposals were submitted and over 100 innovations were prototyped till date.

The Intel Education Initiative is Intel’s sustained commitment to prepare students, with the skills required to thrive in the knowledge economy and face the challenges of the 21st century world by advocating excellence in K-12 education, teacher education, science, math and engineering education. Intel Education Programs are present in more than 70 countries. Intel Higher Education Program works with reputed engineering institutions across India to promote technical education and research in academia.

Image Source : Intel Logo from Wikimedia

|In: General|Last Updated:

The two-day “NASSCOM Game Developer conference” held in November, 2014 was aimed at creating an interactive platform between various industry stakeholders to share best practices and knowledge & work towards further evangelizing the gaming industry. With over 1200+ delegates, over 60 speakers 40 sessions, the conference was aimed at to enhance India’s position as the gaming hub for the world, improve the industry-government interface and collaboration and augment international outreach and access for the Indian gaming fraternity.

NASSCOM released a white paper on the Indian Android market overview on side-lines of the conference. The whitepaper, created in collaboration with Fortumo is created with aim to help Indian developers better monetize their Android games and apps.

Highlights from the Whitepaper

Some of the key Highlights from the Whitepaper are below

  • With over 160mn smartphones in circulation and a majority of these phones running Android OS, India is a huge opportunity for local developers.
  • Creating games which are playable on both online and offline modes to better engage the users.
  • Increasing interest from user-base on downloading games from alternative app stores in addition to Google Play.

The complete Whitepaper can be downloaded from here. NASSCOM announced that NASSCOM 10K Start-ups, NASSCOM Gaming Forum & Dhruva Interactive’ s Gametantra have entered into an understanding by way of which, gaming start-ups applying to NASSCOM 10K Start-Ups will receive mentoring and incubation facilities at the Gametantra incubation facility in Bengaluru. Gametantra mainly focuses on mobile game developers and provides them with office space and mentorship.

NASSCOM plans to take a selected few gaming companies to Casual Connect. Casual Connect is produced by the Casual Games Association & is the premiere event for the casual games industry with over 5,500 professionals attending Casual Connect each year. Casual Connect brings together the most talented and knowledgeable experts in the casual gaming field to further the casual games industry with the best of networking and learning.

More information & complete Whitepaper is here

|In: Ecosystem|Last Updated:

CAMTech INDIA —a new United States Agency for International Development [USAID, India] funded public-private partnership to accelerate medical technology innovation for reproductive, maternal, newborn and child health (RMNCH) in India—announced its first medical technology hack-a-thon in Bangalore on July 18-20, 2014. This inaugural hack-a-thon is being organized in partnership with Glocal Healthcare and hosted by GE Healthcare India.

About Jugaad-a-thon

“The Jugaad-a-thon is a new way of elevating the experience & know-how of local experts, and using strategies from not just engineering, but also public health and business, to develop new tools to improve health,” said Elizabeth Bailey, Director of the Consortium for Affordable Medical Technologies (CAMTech) at Massachusetts General Hospital’s Center for Global Health. “We’re focused on finding impactful, marketable, and innovative ways to provide care to women and children in India.”

Event highlights

CAMTech INDIA’s inaugural Jugaad-a-thon [derived from the Hindi word jugaad meaning an innovative fix or work-around] will be a 48-hour event where 250 clinicians, engineers and entrepreneurs collaborate on disruptive, new solutions for unsolved clinical problems.

Cross-disciplinary teams addressing specific clinical challenges will work late into the night to develop functional prototypes and explore new business models to commercialize their innovations. Teams present their innovations to a panel of judges at the end of the event, and will be awarded a variety of prizes to help take their innovations forward.

Applications for the July 18-20 Jugaad-a-thon are due by July 7, 2014.

For more information, please log on to Jugaad-a-thon website or hop on to their Facebook Page

|In: Bangalore|Last Updated: | 3 Comments

There have been many articles on this blog about Unconference(s) but just like it, there is information scattered on the topic across the internet. There couldn’t have been anyone better than Kiruba Shankar to write a book on Unconference. Before I start the book review, let’s see what exactly is an Unconference:

An unconference is a facilitated, participant-driven conference centered on a theme or purpose. The term “unconference” has been applied, or self-applied, to a wide range of gatherings that try to avoid one or more aspects of a conventional conference etc. [Source : Wikipedia]

To keep it simple, An “Unconference” is a gathering where every attendee is a speaker & it is a conference of the attendee, by the attendee & for the attendee.

About the Author

Kiruba was one of the organizer’s of BlogCamp, Chennai [the first Blog Unconference in India] that was held in 2006 & under the non-profit organization “The Knowledge Foundation”; he & his team have organized many successful unconference’s namely BarCampChennai, BlogCamp, Proto.in, SearchCamp, WikiCamp, FailCamp & many more…

Detailed Review

Being an active unconferencer himself, the author has collated his experiences in his simple book which is around 150 pages long.

The book starts with the basic topic of “Introduction to unconference” given that many of the readers might not be familiar with the concept of Unconference itself !!! The concept is very well explained along with the origin of Unconference [excerpts from the book below]

As stated by Dave Winer – “The sum of expertise of people in the audience is greater than the sum of expertise of people on stage” and called Fundamental Law of Conventional Conferences. If a random group of people were picked from the audience & were put together to discuss the same issue of the conference, it is likely that there is greater energy, enthusiasm & learning. Thus, the idea of unconference’s was born.

For many, it might seem that unconference is similar to “Conference with MORE Freedom” hence the author has explained the “Differences between conferences & unconferences“. Some excerpts from the topic below:

The best time in a conference is during coffee breaks. Unconference is like one big coffee break. Great conversations are definitely expected in unconferences !!!

Rest of the book dives into different methodologies to spice up the meetings & gives details into how “Boring” meetings/conferences can be transformed into “Interesting & Interactive” unconferences. These topics help the reader to organize meetings [with smaller i.e. < 5 members as well larger audience i.e. 50+ more] in a more intuitive way so that every person in the audience takes something back from the meeting !!! Some excerpts from the book on these methodologies below [PS: Every chapter on these topics are sub-divided into a) Uniqueness of the methodology. b) How to organize it. c) Case-Study]:

Open Space Technology

Open Space runs on two fundamentals: Passion & Responsibility. Passion engages people in the room. Responsibility ensures that things get done.

– Harrison Owen, Creator of Open Space Technology.

Four principles of Open Space Technology:

  1. Whoever comes are the right people.
  2. Whatever happens is the only thing that could have happened.
  3. When it starts is the right time.
  4. When it’s over, it’s over.

Appreciative Inquiry

 Appreciative Inquiry leverages the most positive possibilities by involving all the voices in the community.

– Bliss Browne, Founder – Imagine Chicago

 It focues on what is possible rather than what is not. It starts with the belief that every organization & every person in that organization has positive aspects that can be built open. It is one of the best methods to build an “OPEN” company culture !!!

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